Diversity Commitment

As a school of education, whose mission centers on democracy, diversity, equity, and justice through evidence-based policy and practice, we prioritize diversity in race, ethnicity, class, language, gender and sexuality among other types of diversity in every aspect of our school. To work for justice, we know that it is not enough to change our curriculum and teaching practices, nor is it enough to add faculty, staff, and students of color. We are a community that seeks to reflect a commitment to enact anti-racist education in all of our actions and decisions, from the configuration of our new building to center our engagement with each other and our broader community. 

Expanding the diversity of our faculty and staff to support students of color 

In order to increase support for our students of color and honor the lived experiences of our community members, we have made a significant commitment to changing the racial composition of our faculty and staff. The School of Education is committed to building a critical mass of BIPOC faculty, staff, and students, to transform the culture of the School of Education, the university and K-12 schools. 

In only three years, we have increased the percentage of tenure-line faculty of color among our tenure line faculty from 26% (8) to 40% (15). In the same timeframe, we have made the same commitment to hiring staff, with almost 70% of our new hires identifying as people of color; now, 46% of our staff are people of color. We see this commitment as critical to our mission and our ability to create a supportive work and learning environment that advances our commitments to equity and justice.

Supporting students of color

Attracting and supporting the success of students of color is a central priority for our School of Education located in a public university. We know that our graduate students of color bring a powerful combination of academic preparation and professional experience to their studies, enriching not only their classes and their cohorts, but other contexts of teaching and learning. They collaborate with faculty on research and scholarship, contribute their expertise to undergraduate teaching and learning, and also deepen conversations about justice and equity across our campus. Our undergraduate students of color bring their lived experiences and commitments to transforming classrooms and communities.  

In order to better support BIPOC students, we have intentionally designed supports for students in our community including having an Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement and Director of Diversity, Recruitment and Retention. We have expanded course offerings that specifically focus on race and equity including courses on Critical Race Theory, Latinx Issues in Education, African American Issues in Education, Queering Topics in Education, and Step up to Social Justice Teaching to name a few. In our new building we have dedicated spaces for students of color, we have dedicated funds to support BIPOC students and, in response to their request, we are creating a seminar for students of color to provide a space for them to further their learning and connections. We are also engaging faculty, instructors and alumni in ongoing work to decolonize our syllabi and center anti-racism in all of our course offerings and scholarship.

Leveraging diversity to organize for justice

As a School of Education, we see the work of leveraging diversity to organize for justice as ongoing work that grows out of a space of joy, acknowledgement of human creativity and agency, and our commitment to each other and our communities. We recognize this is an ambitious and challenging project that both envisions and seeks to create new futures, and doing so in a community with multiple voices and perspectives is both a gift and something that requires great intentionality. We hope that the space we are creating together can support our students and the University of Colorado in mobilizing the collective power needed to enact our commitments to democracy, diversity, equity, and justice.  
 
Drawing on scholarship and histories of activism, we start by acknowledging that the hierarchies that exist in our society—that support the view that some people's lives don't matter and others are much more valued—are deeply etched into our social structure, our day-to-day interactions, our policies, and our habits and dispositions. The violence that is supported through racial, gender, class, sexuality, ability, language, caste hierarchies affects our minds, our spirits, and our bodies. In our School of Education, we are striving to create a world where we can break down these hierarchies, so that our work toward becoming more diverse and anti-racist enables us to imagine new futures.