Strategic Planning for Inclusive Excellence

Strategic Planning for Inclusive Excellence

Clemson University is undergoing a process whereby every college, division, university commission, as well as Faculty and Staff Senates are developing, implementing, and assessing strategic plans focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.

What is Inclusive Excellence?

Inclusive excellence is:

• A focus on student intellectual and social development.
• A purposeful development of and utilization of organizational resources to enhance student learning
• Attention to the cultural differences learners bring to the educational experience and that enhance the enterprise.
• A welcoming community that engages all of its diversity in the service of student and organizational learning.

The Inclusive Excellence model was developed by work commissioned by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and funded by the Ford Foundation. The work was designed to help campuses: (a) integrate their diversity and quality efforts, (b) situate this work at the core of institutional functioning, and (c) realize the educational benefits available to students and to the institution when this integration is done well and is sustained over time. (Williams, Berger and McClendon, 2005, p. iii)

Williams, D. A., Berger, J. B., & McClendon, S. A. (2005). Toward a model of inclusive excellence and change in postsecondary institutions. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.