A Mission Imperative

Inclusive Excellence is the recognition that a college or university’s ability to successfully advance its mission is dependent on how fully it values, engages and includes the rich diversity of students, staff, faculty, administrators, trustees, alumni, institutional partners and guests. Operationalizing Inclusive Excellence leads to infusing diversity into the institution’s recruiting, admissions, hiring and promotion processes; into its curriculum and co-curriculum, and into its administrative structures and practices. Informed by and responsive to UD’s Catholic and Marianist mission, Inclusive Excellence requires a fundamental transformation of the institution calling for it to embrace and implement means for the comprehensive, cohesive, coherent and collaborative amalgamation of diversity and inclusion into the university’s understanding and pursuit of excellence.

The definition of Inclusive Excellence is intended to be flexible enough to be “localized” by a campus while also retaining basic principles to guide a national movement and to connect campuses in these efforts. The definition consists of four primary elements¹

1. A focus on student intellectual and social development. Academically, it means offering the best possible course of study for the context in which the education is offered.
2. A purposeful development and utilization of organizational resources to enhance student learning. Organizationally, it means establishing an environment that challenges each student to achieve academically at high levels and each member of the campus to contribute to learning and knowledge development.
3. Attention to the cultural differences learners bring to the educational experience and that enhance the enterprise.
4. A welcoming community that engages all of its diversity in the service of student and organizational learning.

^[1] Adopted from Damon Williams’ Strategic Diversity Leadership Approach, 2013, and Insight Into Diversity’s Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award Criteria, 2017.