Priority

Provide multiple opportunities and options for students to connect with supportive and safe people and places on campus. Institutionalize more staffing structures and places that can support, advocate and provide space for programming, dialogue, response and celebration.

Goals

  • Build a culture of inclusiveness on campus by creating an environment where all students feel welcome, heard, and understood through increased assessment of student needs, educational opportunities, and intercultural competence training for staff and faculty
  • Identify, develop, and institute curricular and complementary co-curricular methods of building cultural capacity for all members of the Wheaton community to strengthen our culture of inclusiveness
  • Develop a system for assessment to evaluate progress of initiatives.

Recommended Strategies

  • Include more student success stories on the Wheaton web page, brochures, Wheaton Magazine, and other external-facing marketing materials and internal publications to more accurately mirror Wheaton’s demography.
  • Enhance the focus of the Marshall Center in providing academic, cultural and social support for students of color. The Center will work to offer co-curricular enrichment and programs with partners in the Academic Affairs division.
  • Develop and institutionalize a diversity program or training as a hallmark component to the Wheaton Orientation Programs as well as adding a follow up program to Wheaton Orientation Programs within the first 6 weeks.
  • Clarify the purpose of CID as a committee that is charged with identifying gaps in social justice programming on campus through assessment and coordinating a series of signature social justice programs and flexible training units that happen on an annual basis
  • Task Intercultural Board with inventorying and assessing all current intercultural events of current clubs and organizations under the ICB umbrella and consider alternative ways to streamline social justice themed programs to improve visibility and engagement.
  • Ensure that diversity training is included as a component in all leadership development programs on campus. Wheaton should work cross-divisionally and cross-departmentally to strengthen these programs, providing cross training based on the expertise of each department/area.
  • Develop and offer additional flexible training units around diversity, including interfaith, abilities, social justice ally, and other modules, similar to SAFE zone
  • Develop and offer courses that build cultural competence into the curriculum or mandate courses that focus on cultural competency

Progress