Strengthening Our Commitment to Diversity

A Southern at 150 Priority

SIUC Chancellor Walter V. Wendler September 22, 2003

Diversity is a core value identified and affirmed as part of our broad-based planning effort culminating in Southern at 150: Building Excellence Through Commitment. Specifically, our core value of diversity states:

"Diversity will strengthen our ability to attain our educational mission. As our world increasingly changes, so must we. We will not only respect, but also value differences in all their forms of expression as necessary to the creation of a view of each other that is balanced and healthy. We will be known for a faculty and a student body that reflects the human and ethnic diversity and intellectual pluralism of the world."

Southern Illinois University Carbondale will represent the richness and variety that exists in the population of our State. It is our responsibility as a state university -- it is our calling as an institution of higher learning that seeks to make knowledge accessible and vital. Our vision to include all members of the campus community, as articulated in Southern at 150: Building Excellence Through Commitment, must be expanded for us to benefit from the lessons, strategies, and perspectives obtained from a variety of life experiences.

Some guiding principles, as expressed in the Southern at 150: Building Excellence Through Commitment theme group reports, encourage and support institutional activities and intellectual perspectives that foster a climate and collective belief that Southern will be better, stronger, and more vibrant by vigorously pursuing diversity along all of its dimensions. These guiding principles include:

Develop and support a multicultural climate on campus that will enhance the value of diversity for our students, faculty, and staff.

Nurture an environment that is open to the diversity of ideas, opinions, and cultures, both socially and intellectually.

Recruit, hire and retain faculty that are diverse in terms of gender, racial/ethnic, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, cultural, socioeconomic, and religious differences, with the goal of reflecting the diversity of the larger society.

Enhance our programs, curriculum, and services to incorporate and acknowledge the value of diversity.

Enhance our efforts at maintaining an undergraduate and graduate student population that is ethnically, geographically, and internationally diverse.

Provide information that assists faculty, staff, and students in recognizing, understanding, respecting, valuing, and celebrating human differences.

A strengthening of our commitment to diversity comes with a great deal of additional responsibility. Non-traditional students as well as students from a multitude of ethnic and cultural heritages will come to Southern in pursuit of their dreams, yet many may need help in navigating the halls of the academy. Not only must the University community recognize and value the well-established benefits of a more diverse climate, but also develop a collective will, an expectation of accountability, and commit appropriate resources in order to support greater numbers of individuals with more varied needs in their pursuit of success. Our belief in the value of diversity must include an explicit expectation that every member of the campus community is accountable for their role in achieving a faculty, staff, and student body that is reflective of the world in which we live. Diversity is not a department, nor an office, but rather a way of thinking and behaving in a civil, just, and democratic culture.

Southern Illinois University is the envy of many institutions because of its early and successful efforts toward inclusion. However, we will continue, affirm, and expand our efforts to respond to the changing demographics of the state, nation, and world. This means increasing our efforts toward the recruitment and retention of students, faculty, staff, and administrators who mirror the diversity evident in society.

We are committed to continuously becoming better at what we do: a commitment to excellence. Southern Illinois University Carbondale must also be committed to engage the University community in focused and energetic dialogue to embrace diversity and subsequently develop, with the same degree of vigor, a campus-wide plan, including goals and targets, on how to best fulfill the tenets of creating a diverse University environment as we move towards meeting the goals outlined in Southern at 150: Building Excellence Through Commitment. The entire University community must be empowered to promote diversity in all aspects of University life. Administrators will be held accountable for making progress towards meeting the goals necessary to foster, support, and nurture a campus community that ultimately reflects the rich diversity of the state, nation, and world. Our ability to be true to our mission and to provide the best educational opportunities for our students will be compromised if we are not responsive to the opportunities that our commitment to diversity requires.