Inclusive Excellence

All Learners Welcome: The Brown Center keeps an ever-expanding google document of resources for inclusive teaching.  We invite your contributions!

What is Inclusive Excellence?

Inclusive Excellence recognizes and celebrates how well an institution values, engages, and includes the rich diversity of students, staff, faculty, administrators, alumni, and broader community members. The Association of American Colleges & Universities understands inclusive excellence as a fundamental goal “of higher education and as resources for learning that are valuable for all students, vital to democracy and a democratic workforce and to the global position and wellbeing of the United States”.

“Inclusion is active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity – in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum, and in communities (intellectual, social, cultural, geographical) with which individuals might connect – in ways that increase awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication, and emphatic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and institutions.”

A course may offer diverse strategies and pedagogical approaches that are not inclusive.  A community may be diverse but not inclusive. Rather, inclusivity engages all of its diversity in the service of students, staff, teacher-scholar, and organizational learning. Striving for inclusive excellence makes certain that diverse ways of being, doing, and knowing receive equitable voice, participation, and action.

• Anti-Racism Resources at Southern Illinois University
• Becoming an Anti-Racist Educator
• Anti-Racist Pedagogy & More: Resource List
• Systematic Racism Explained
• Mechanisms for Advancing Inclusion at Stetson University
• Inclusive Excellence at Stetson University is not Black and White
• Inclusive Excellence Resources

Programs & Resources

The following list highlights a few celebrations and engaged learning opportunities at Stetson University designed to explore equity, diversity, and inclusion as we prepare students for the challenges of a global twenty-first century and foster a healthy, viable institution, now and in the future.

Anti-Racist White Ally Affinity Reading Group Resources

International Learning
International learning at Stetson University advances an intercultural and transnational intellectual community, expanding the reach of Stetson University and sharing the university’s knowledge with the world while bringing the world to the university. Faculty engage in diverse aspects of international learning and offer significant learning experiences to boost Stetson University as a global leader in higher education and international connectedness noted for exceptional global competency.

Values Day
Values Day celebrates Stetson University’s core values of personal growth, intellectual development and global citizenship. The annual tradition, held in September, was established by Stetson University’s eighth president, H. Douglas Lee. 

Office of Diversity & Inclusion
The primary mission of the Office Diversity and Inclusion is to educate our campus community on issues relating to social identity development— in terms of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, socioeconomic status and ability — and how those factors can impact one’s college experience. Through compassionate education, our office is invested in partnering with various offices, departments and student groups to provide programs, training and workshops to further inclusive excellence on our campus.

Inclusive Excellence in Teaching SymposiumAs part of our efforts to actively and intentionally engage diversity and inclusion in the curriculum, Stetson University hosts an annual symposium where faculty, staff, students, and members of the broader community share pedagogical approaches, research,  and mechanisms to address teaching and learning to foster students access and success.

Intergroup Dialogue
Intergroup dialogue is a specific form of face-to-face communication especially designed for people to communicate across social, cultural, and power differences.  It is distinct from debate and discussion in that the goal of dialogue is understanding and not necessarily agreement.  A successful dialogue requires significant trust among participants and engages active listening skills. Intergroup dialogue has spawned a number of academic programs across the nation, including Intergroup Relations programs.

Social Justice Lecture Series
The Social Justice Lecture Series strives to foster a sense of lifelong vigilance that equips participants to effect social change through global community engagement and civic responsibility.

Teaching and Learning Day
During Teaching and Learning Day, Stetson faculty and staff discuss big issues and ideas in higher education while learning together as a community.

Colloquium on Teaching & Learning Innovation
There’s something for everyone at the annual Colloquium on Teaching and Learning Innovation, hosted by Stetson University. Join colleagues from across the nation for a celebration of learning excellence. Share teaching and learning innovations, gains you have made in any area of learning, present new ideas, and more.

Stetson R.E.A.D.s
Stetson’s Read, Eat and Discuss//Reflect, Engage, Affirm Diversity supports scholarly discussion, valuation, reflection, and fellowship through a reading focused on inclusive excellence of wide interest.