In fall 2024, Worcester State welcomed its most diverse incoming first-year class in its 150-year history, but with its new Inclusive Excellence and Belonging Strategic Plan, the university hopes to do even more.
“We want the strategic plan to be more than aspirational,” said Executive Director for Inclusive Excellence and Belonging Dr. Edgar Moros. “We want it to be an active document that actually gets work done.”
The plan, which was presented to the Board of Trustees on Nov, 26, is a roadmap for providing all members of the university community an experience that equips them to relate to all persons and groups in the increasingly global and diverse world in which we live and work. Some of the goals include hiring more faculty who better represent the diversity of the student body, connecting students with staff or faculty mentors, and not only enrolling diverse students, but supporting them and seeing them through to graduation. Others include hiring for a staff position focused on equity, working with faculty to connect curricula to speakers on anti-racism, and reinvigorating the mini-grant program that provides funding for research.
“We must not only enroll students from historically underrepresented identities, we must do all that we can to set them up for success,” said President Barry Maloney. “As has been said at our annual Unity Day—which is now embedded in our academic calendar—we are ‘better together,’ and it is by working together that we will meet the goals of the Inclusive Excellence and Belonging Strategic Plan.”
Much of the work of achieving these goals will be done through various campus-wide committees that support protected classes of individuals. The new plan includes five existing committees: Campus Climate Committee, Advisory Committee for Equal Opportunity, Diversity and Affirmative Action, LGBTQIA+ Advisory Committee, Anti-racism Subcommittee, and Bias Incident Response Team (BIRT). It also introduces three new committees for the 2024-2025 Academic Year. These committees will be Accessibility Committee, Military and Veteran Affairs Committee, and Adult Learner Committee. All these committees make yearly recommendations to the president for improving access to members of protected classes.
The Accessibility Committee will step in where Student Accessibility Services’ purview ends, dealing with issues that affect all Worcester State community members with disabilities, including staff, faculty, and visitors. The Campus Climate Committee has already identified that a microphone policy is needed to ensure that more people will be able to hear speakers.
At the end of the year, there will be a review of initiatives to keep them progressing.
According to Moros, the initiatives outlined in the strategic plan come from up to nine years’ worth of work of different committees. The strategic plan will allow the newly formed steering committee to better track these initiatives, many of which are already underway.
It’s work that encompasses nearly every aspect of the university, and it will be a community effort, Moros says. The committees represent a wide swath of faculty and staff, but Moros hopes to get more students involved to make sure their perspectives are heard.
The strategic plan comes alongside a name change and refocus for the Office of Inclusive Excellence and Belonging, which more fully represents all the work the office is doing to foster diversity, end discrimination, promote the ability of everyone to thrive regardless of their background and membership to a protected class and provide a campus climate conducive to the success of every student and employee.
“What we do in this office is try to work with all the protected categories,” Moros said. “And I’m sure that if you look at all the protected categories, people will find themselves in at least one. Whether it be disability, whether it be LGBTQIA+, race, or gender based, there’s something in this plan for everyone.”
Moros says there are several things the university is already doing well, including being open to changing processes and thinking about what changing demographics mean, but he says it’s important for the university to challenge itself.
“I think one of the biggest things the plan does is visibilize this work,” he said, “It shows that this work is meaningful, that it’s needed.”
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