Employee Learning Week (ELW) is a global campaign sponsored by the Association for Talent Development to highlight the important connection between learning and achieving organizational results. Each year, the Department of Human Resources (HR) celebrates ELW by recognizing and promoting employee learning across campus.
This year Human Resources is featuring several activities for ELW, including a daily focus on our campus core competencies. Established in 2019, the campus core competencies translate values into behaviors, and helps to align those behaviors with the campus culture and vision. HR invites you to learn more about our core competencies and begin discussions with your colleagues on how these competencies play a role in your own work and learning. We invited campus colleagues to illuminate each core competency in a series of commentaries featured through Employee Learning Week.
Core Competency: Inclusive Excellence
Exemplifying excellence through diversity by creating a welcoming and inclusive environment that maximizes the success and inclusion of all students, staff, and faculty.
Commentary by Alphonse Keasley, Associate Vice Chancellor
Alphonse Keasley serves as the Associate Vice Chancellor in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement.
- What is one skill that someone could do on our campus to embody this competency?
- "First, it should be understood that Inclusive Excellence is the goal and that “making excellence inclusive” (MEI) is the process and skills that we engage to achieve Inclusive Excellence. To work toward “making excellence inclusive,” it is advisable to review the description of excellence that your department submitted for its Inclusive Excellence 2-page narrative. If the document is not readily available, this might be the first task for building MEI skills. For some campus members, this process has been helpful in re-defining what excellence is for each unit. Once your unit’s excellence is articulated for all to know and be aware of what to strive for, then you and your colleagues are ready to attend to making it inclusive.
A skill related to inclusion is to un-learn/re-learn. Unlearning (“proactive interference” is a phrase that is also used for this concept) is difficult, so I typically suggest that people begin by re-learning. An example: In my class, students reframe their definition of feminism after reading bell hooks’ definition in Feminism Is For Everybody “Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression” (ii). So, the task for building your inclusivity skill is to seek recommendations on worthwhile material to read that can assist with the re-learning/un-learning process. Another action you might take is to participate in public events involving groups that you have a strong desire to learn about to re-learn/un-learn. As you and your colleagues begin to build your inclusivity skills, knowledge and abilities that lead to competence, you can work to reframe your department’s excellence definition towards making excellence inclusive."
- What are the effects and outcomes when an organization truly embraces this competency?
- "If each department encourages all of its members to develop an extensive recommended reading list and participate, not just observe, interactions around the campus, city and county, it would serve as a first step toward cultural competency for all. As knowledge, another component of competency, grows, the overall departmental cultural competence begins to advance toward improving the departmental climate and creating a welcoming environment. Further, as the climate deepens, departmental members’ abilities, yet another component of competence, to interact across differences expands. Ideally, this overall process becomes ingrained in the departmental culture, thus becoming a department-of-choice for members from historically marginalized communities to work. Within time, Inclusive excellence will be a reality for the department and the practice for all current and new employees."
Learn more about the Campus Core Competencies
To learn more about the campus core competencies, please visit the performance page of the Human Resources website.
Key Behaviors of the Inclusive Excellence Competency
How to get involved
The Department of Human Resources (HR) creates success through others as we all strive to achieve the goals and fulfill the mission of CU Boulder. HR contribute leadership, ideas, and services that allow each person – whether an individual contributor or manager; a member of the faculty or staff – to do what they do…better. Visit https://www.colorado.edu/hr to learn more about HR.