Vice Provost for Diversity and Community Engagement Message: USF 2028 Conversations

11/11/2016

University Department Meetings to Address the Topic of Diversity

The University Council on Diversity and Inclusion (UCDI) has been tasked by the president to animate and support the second in a series of campus conversations designed to assess capacity and engagement from across the campus community in regards to our institutional commitment to educating students for leadership in a diverse and interdependent world, as we articulated in the consensus USF 2028.

These conversations assume that the richness of a USF Jesuit education is the product of the thoughtful integration of the five constituent aspects that describe the educational excellence of the university: Jesuit Catholic tradition, academic excellence, San Francisco location, diversity, and global perspective. These five qualities taken together, and only together, provide the foundation to prepare USF “students for the complexities of a diverse and interdependent world” (USF 2028). 

Division/departmental/unit leaders will facilitate conversations with their respective teams during a regularly scheduled meeting for at least a 30-minute period. Facilitators work to establish a welcome space for the dialogues. They can reach out to UCDI animators (note takers) by emailing diversity@usfca.edu before the conversation to request an animator to take notes for their conversation, for suggestions on how to establish a welcome space, and for guidance on how to facilitate conversation. 

Please find descriptions of campus community partners’ roles in these conversations on the guidelines web page, and the timeline for implementation below. More details about the 2028 Conversations on Diversity can be found on the UCDI website. 

Timeline for 2028 Conversations on Diversity 

Oct. 24, 2016–Feb. 3, 2017
Department/division/unit conversations held.

Feb. 10, 2017
Deadline to submit notes to diversity@usfca.edu. 

Feb. 13–24, 2017
Notes are compiled and categorized by Diversity Engagement and Community Outreach. 

Feb. 27, 2017
Compiled notes are submitted to UCDI for discussion and synthesis. 

April 12, 2017
Vice Provost of Diversity Engagement and Community Outreach and UCDI present synthesized notes to president and campus community with recommended initiatives.