Advancing Racial Equity
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- Significant progress has been made in the Advancing Racial Equity strategic planning process.
- In Summer 2022, the Office of Diversity, Equity and Engagement’s Diversity Education team received and reviewed departmental and college Advancing Racial Equity strategic plans.
- In Fall 2022, team met with Deans to provide feedback.
- In Fall 2023, the Advancing Racial Equity report was released outlining the goals of the departmental plans.
- In Summer 2023, the Office outlined the Advancing Racial Equity strategic planning process for non-academic units.
- The non-academic unit plans are due in Spring 2024. Additionally, for the first time, evaluations of deans will include review of plan implementation.
Check out our new ARE Award Program
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Introduction Heading link
UIC's Commitment
UIC’s commitment to equity and inclusion has been a strategic priority for the last decade. However, we are well aware that while we have made some important advances, many more steps are needed to create a more equitable and just university. The past few years have brought a new sense of urgency, as our nation and city have experienced the two pandemics of state violence against Black community members, and the heightened impact of COVID-19 on communities of color. The movement for Black lives, most recently manifested in the protests against racial injustice in the summer of 2020, has resonated deeply in Chicago, a city with a long history of anti-racist struggle. Many members of our UIC community participated in protests throughout Chicago, while the scholarship of our faculty on these issues has informed local and nation-wide conversations on social justice, structural racism, and anti-racism initiatives.
UIC is also responding to this historical moment. Our UIC community of students, faculty and staff relied on petitions, meetings, and town halls to express the need to work against systemic racism in our own campus spaces, reviewing and changing existing policies and practices, and investing the resources needed to make us more inclusive and equitable.
Racial Equity Taskforce
In June 2020, then UIC Chancellor Michael Amiridis UIC’s commitment to addressing systemic racism, improving our campus climate, and advancing racial equity on our campus. To pursue these goals he created a Racial Equity Taskforce to review the state of our campus and prioritize key action items. This task force consisted of four working groups and one board: Student Life and Support, Community Engagement, and Staff Recruitment and Retention, who completed their work in Fall 2020, and the Public Safety Board. The first four groups have completed their work and submitted their recommendations. Additionally, a group of external experts was invited to review our campus policies and practices and provide their advice.
The UIC Public Safety Board has been formally established as an enduring board to provide opportunities to improve the public safety on campus based on feedback gathered directly from community members. As part of these efforts, the board, in partnership with the UIC Police Department, will make recommendations about issues related to public safety at UIC, especially viewed from a perspective of racial equity and social justice. Click here to read the rest of the official announcement.
Mission
UIC’s Advancing Racial Equity (ARE) initiative is a response designed to address the institutional and structural racism that impacts our campus and our neighboring communities. Between June 2020 and January 2021 we reviewed student and faculty petitions and recommendations from four working groups: student life and support, community engagement, staff recruitment and retention, and the Public Safety Board. Additionally, we worked directly with three external advisors, Nancy Cantor, Earl Lewis and Claude Steele, with expertise in higher education and race to review and make recommendations related to the recruitment and retention of black faculty and students. Finally, the Chancellor’s African American Advisory Council also met with the Chancellor and presented their report with a set of key recommendations. During this period, UIC leadership has had many meetings with students, faculty, community members and experts to ensure that all key stakeholders and engaged and have a voice in the process.
Advancing Racial Equity aspires to ensure that UIC is a campus where Black Lives Matter, Black students matter, Black voices matter, Black dreams matter, and Black communities matter. Our overarching goal is to engage in the hard work that required to become a campus where BIPOC students, faculty and staff are always valued and can reach their full potential.
ARE has five goals as its pillars:
- Centering Student equity and inclusion
- Advancing Faculty and Staff Inclusive Excellence
- Collaborating with Community
- Promoting an Atmosphere of Care & Concern
- Ensuring accountability
We believe that all five are necessary to move our campus forward.
ARE Strategic Planning
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Bridge to Faculty (B2F) is a recruitment program designed to attract underrepresented postdoctoral scholars with the goal of a direct transition to a tenure-track junior faculty position after two years. This recruitment initiative aims to attract and retain promising scholars to UIC as well as diversify our faculty, with particular emphasis on departments with low or no presence of faculty who are underrepresented in their field. B2F uses a cohort model, where postdoctoral scholars participate together in meetings and tailored workshops to prepare them to teach, establish a research program and support their ability to pursue grants, and create productive mentor relationships.
Progress Tracking: Advancing Racial Equity at UIC
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