Published: May 24, 2018

The committee charged with authoring Boulder’s Diversity, Inclusion and Academic Excellence Plan has been formed and is beginning its work.

The Diversity, Inclusion and Academic Excellence Authoring Committee is co-chaired by Daryl Maeda, associate professor of ethnic studies, and Merna Jacobsen, assistant vice chancellor and deputy chief human resources officer and director. Its 22 members represent academic units, administrative offices on campus, graduate and undergraduate students, faculty and staff.

The committee is convened by Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement (ODECE) Bob Boswell and facilitated by Alaina Beaver, initiatives director for ODECE.

“The authoring committee is a vital cross-section of our campus community,” said Boswell. “It will work this summer on exploring existing data and documents related to diversity and inclusive excellence, meet with strategic partners to solicit input, provide feedback from the inclusive excellence update forums held this past spring, and begin authoring the campus’s Diversity, Inclusion and Academic Excellence Plan.”

Boswell said a draft of the plan will be submitted for the campus to review and provide input on this fall.

“That input will include public forums, digital formats and outreach sessions with specific units on campus that request them,” Boswell said.

The summer’s work follows the eight open-campus inclusive excellence update forums that ODECE hosted this past spring, in which attendees provided feedback on the campus definition of inclusive excellence, engaged in dialogue and put forth commentary for the authoring committee’s consideration.

Additional feedback for the authoring committee may be submitted directly on ODECE’s website, which will be accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis.

Once completed, the draft plan will provide an evolving blueprint for community action in making excellence inclusive that can be customized to the needs of individual departments, colleges and campus units.