Recommendation 1: Create a culture of dialogue and communication for diversity, equity, and inclusion by providing safe spaces, opportunities, and platforms for all members of the Trinity community

CATEGORY 4: CAMPUS CLIMATE AND PROGRAMMING

Recommendation 1: Create a culture of dialogue and communication for diversity, equity, and inclusion by providing safe spaces, opportunities, and platforms for all members of the Trinity community.

Rationale: Using the HEDS Climate Survey as a benchmark along with the Gallup employee engagement survey results, there is a need to develop a series of webinars, forums, round table discussions, channels of communication, and platforms for giving and hearing all voices inclusive of Black/African American Alumni that are conducted regularly throughout the academic year, available On Demand, and encouraged. Additionally, the university is void of any implementation of a University-wide communication plan to ensure sustained, fundamental change is being achieved. Internal communication is critical and dependent on institutional support as the university progresses along a continuum toward needed change.

The University recognizes and aspires to move away from practices of segregation and assimilation to being committed to practices of acculturation and empowerment for those less empowered in positionality and responsibility. The university will further become an institution that implements policies and procedures in pursuit of a campus that fosters inclusive excellence for all students, faculty, and staff to feel welcomed, appreciated, and valued. Given the most recent surveys, interviews, and social media activity, there is an acute recognition that changing hearts and minds takes individual and collective work. Nevertheless, individuals have to be allowed to begin at different points in their journey toward achieving the goal of creating a culture of dialogue and communication around diversity, equity, and inclusion. This will require the University to acknowledge these varying degrees of student, faulty, staff, and alumni understandings.

Programming, initiatives, and events should map toward this goal and while seeking to meet people where they are - pushing our collective community toward real, sustained change. This is the starting point for crafting the strategies outlined in this section. Helping students feel a greater sense of community and “belonging” has been identified as a core University initiative under the value of intentional inclusion - defined by the Retention and Graduation Task Force. This recommendation complements and scales the work that’s been outlined by the Retention and Graduation Task Force and seeks to move simultaneously in achieving the various goals in both reports.

Stakeholders: Students, Faculty, Staff, Alumni, Board of Trustees

Recommended Actions Performance Indicators

The following concepts are possible tactics for consideration when building strategic plans for campus communication and programming:

Webinar dialogues; forums; round table discussions; channels of communication; platforms for giving and hearing voices (see recommendation about oral history project).

Empathy sessions between Black alumni and students as well as other underrepresented groups.

Create table talk discussions with incoming first year students to hear their concerns and experiences based on their life experiences when they arrive on campus.

Endorse and promote the creation of social media groups that connect students and alumni of color and other underrepresented groups; students and alumni with similar religious beliefs, etc. all targeted toward increasing the level and greater depth of dialogue and networking.

Leverage New Student Orientation, returning to campus upper-class students, and new employee orientation to incorporate various service-learning components that culminate with group discussion and reflection.

Embed relevant content into creditbearing courses and/or conduct table talks to educate students on campus as well as within the local community; Topics might include: the role of voting as engaged citizenship, the challenges of privilege, better recognition and All performance indicators in these recommended actions are inclusive of completedinitiatives, programs, events, and activities as established by the appropriate units with appropriate after-action review for accountability, documentation of progress, and opportunities for improvement.

Responsible Parties

President, Executive leadership Team,

understanding of the Black Lives Matter movement, the effects of police brutality within the nation, racism and anti-racism, changing disparity at Trinity, issues of alternative lifestyles and differing sexual orientations, etc.

Suggested Timeline: While there are some dependencies to full buy-in of this work, a crosssection of key stakeholders across campus can be brought together for initial planning of the strategies in this section under the leadership of the President with the Executive Leadership Team. ● Cross-sectional implementation team identified. ● Relevant entities should contribute to and support the work of the Director for Student Diversity and Inclusion (to be hired) in creating programs and events leading to a culture of dialogue and communication. ● Programming and events will need to begin with a rollout of internal communications strategy prior to the fall semester of each academic year. ● Tools for benchmarking and measurement are to be selected with key performance indicators identified by the appropriate implementation group.