Elephant in the Room Goals and Connection to Strategic Initiatives

IUP is a stronger, safer, and more productive community if everyone is heard and respected. Women’s and Gender Studies and the Center for Teaching Excellence are pleased and proud to bring to IUP a year-long series of workshops, teaching circles and group discussions, and guest presenters to help us all strengthen and enhance our responses when conversations get tough. The tools we share are designed to enhance IUP’s faculty (and students) already strong skill sets and to do so in ways that fall outside of traditional classroom dynamics.

Faculty Focus: Overall Goal for the Series

To enhance and strengthen faculty capacity as a collaborative campus partner with shared responsibility and accountability for diversity, inclusion, and equity.

Faculty Engagement in Diversity, Inclusion and Equity

• Faculty are positioned to lead on issues of diversity, inclusion, and equity in the classroom, as academic advisors, as advisors for student organizations, and in other contexts.
• Faculty are at the intersection of competing, diverging, and sometimes (dis)agreeing points of view.
• Faculty are a critical interface in the exchange of new ideas, ideas that often bring conflicted emotions.
• Faculty serve as models to their students of how to live responsibly in a diverse and multicultural world.
• The skills we share are designed to enhance IUP’s faculty already strong skill sets and to do so in ways that fall outside of traditional classroom dynamics.

Furthering IUP’s Strategic Plan Goals and Diversity Action Plan

IUP Strategic Plan, 2015–20

• Strategic Plan Goal 1: Provide innovative academic programs of high quality and value. Strategy 4; Tactic 2: Engage IUP’s community of teacher-scholars to strengthen undergraduate education through faculty professional development and innovative classroom practices.
• Strategic Plan Goal 2: Prepare all of IUP’s students for success in work and life, in addition to academic success. Strategy 2; Tactic 2: Pursue academic programming and support that increases opportunities for our diverse undergraduate and graduate student populations across all IUP campuses. Strategy 2; Tactic 3: Hire and retain a more diverse faculty and staff. Strategy 3: Prepare students to work and live in a culturally diverse and global future. Strategy 3; Tactic 4: Expand multicultural programming and support. Strategy 3; Tactic 6: Coordinate the design, implementation, and assessment of out-of-classroom learning experiences and related co-curricular activities
• Strategic Plan Goal 4: Strengthen IUP’s value to our local, state, and global partners. Strategy 2: Tactic 4: Strengthen IUP’s reputation as a safe and responsible academic community through communication, transparency, and collaboration with student leadership and local and community partners.

IUP Diversity Action Plan, March 2018

Theme 7: Engage members of the IUP community in cross-cultural activities and provide ongoing training that promotes a climate of civility and celebrates IUP’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Recommendations By Category: Education and Training; Programming

Recommendations by Focus Area: Item 1: Nurture and Accepting Climate; Item 6: Enhance/Support Professional Development and Diversity Awareness for Faculty/Staff