Creating Equity Infrastructure: Breaking Down Silos, Building Up Bridges

• Is the DEI work on your campus largely siloed and seen as the responsibility of just one office (or even one person)?
• Are your institutional DEI goals stuck at the level of aspirational statements with little real follow-through in actions?
• Are DEI efforts seen as top-down mandates that receive strong pushback from faculty and staff?
• Do your faculty and staff generally support DEI efforts but seem unsure about what to do or how to do it?

At San Diego State University, we have sought to address these challenges by cultivating a broad infrastructure of colleagues working on DEI within and across units. A critical part of the process has been extensive support and professional development, intentionally designed to accommodate a wide range of faculty and staff experience with DEI (i.e. to ‘meet them where they are’), thus building the capacity of individual faculty and staff to engage in this work in meaningful ways. A second critical factor has been honoring the institution’s long commitment to shared governance, both by involving existing governance structures (e.g., the University Senate) and creating new structures to provide guidance and feedback for new initiatives.

This institute will engage participants in considering how components of this approach can be applied or adapted for their own institutions to leverage existing resources and engage campus stakeholders in:

• developing unit-level diversity plans examining representation, climate and success for staff, faculty, and students; and
• building cross-campus collaborations and infrastructure to support DEI in every unit.

Participants will consider how this framework might be adapted to their institutions, including identifying where and how DEI already exists on their own campus, and identifying opportunities for connections and incremental changes that can build and support that work. Participants will be provided with templates and practical suggestions for leading similar initiatives on their own campuses. Significant time will be devoted to developing action plans and we encourage campuses to send multi-person teams. See event flyer

Who should attend:

• Diversity officers
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion developers and instructors
• Faculty and/or staff developers
• Deans, chairs, directors, VPs, and/or any other administrators interested in advancing diversity, equity and inclusion within specific units or campuswide

PLUS: Building Equity Infrastructure webinar series

In addition, throughout AY23-24, we will host a monthly webinar series to focus on specific strategies to build capacity and infrastructure in different areas of the institution. Institute participants will have access to five webinars as part of their Institute registration, and will be able to register for additional webinars at a reduced rate (note: registration for the webinars is separate from the Institute and will be available at a later date).

• Sept 13, 2023: Integrating anti-racism across the curriculum
• Oct 11, 2023: Building equity and inclusion into faculty hiring, part I (Building on Inclusive Excellence program)
• Nov 8, 2023: Building equity and inclusion into faculty hiring, part II (Inclusion Representatives)
• Jan 17, 2024: Employee Resource Groups
• Feb 14, 2024: Creating infrastructure for Heritage Month celebrations
• Mar 13, 2024: Bias reporting system and response protocol
• Apr 10, 2024: HSI governance and engagement
• May 8, 2024: Building student capacity
• June 12, 2024: Data-informed continuous improvement