Working Group 3

Chairs:

  • Jane Bleasdale, Assistant Professor, School of Education
  • Lester Deanes, Assistant Vice President for Student Engagement, Student Life
  • Kevin Lo, Professor, International Management, School of Management

Members:

  • Bukola Adesokan-Cobb, Assistant Director, Recent Graduate and Student Engagement, Development
  • Amanda Boushey, Director, Prospect Development & Analytics, Development
  • Domonique Crosby, Associate Director, Residential Life, Office of Community Living
  • Erin Echols, Director, Cultural Centers, Student Life 
  • Marie Dutton, Director, Pre-Health Professions Advising, College of Arts and Sciences
  • Michael Goldman, Professor, College of Arts and Sciences
  • Kelly Guyton, Senior Digital Media Manager, Office of Marketing Communications
  • Ying-Sing (Cynthia) Lai, Associate Director, International Student and Scholar Services
  • Joshua McDermott, Director of Performance Spaces,College of Arts and Sciences
  • Janine Mixon, Director, Office of Graduate Student Success and Engagement, School of Management
  • Ashley Morello, CASA Academic Success Coach, Student Life
  • Stephanie Ortiz-Garcia, Associate Director, Undergraduate Admission-SEM
  • Dan Perez-Sornia, Assistant Director, Cultural Centers - Gender and Sexuality Center
  • Magaly Salas, Student Success Librarian, Gleeson Library
  • Sabrina Sayre, Marketing Strategist - SEM, Office of Marketing Communications
  • Jess Varga, Title IX Coordinator, Student Life 
  • Cheryl Vargas, Director, Women in Leadership and Philanthropy, Development
  • Lucy Zhu, Program Manager, Student Engagement, Student Life

SPAC Ambassadors:

The Working Group on Providing a Radically Inclusive, International, and Welcoming Campus is a widely-representative group tasked with implementation of initiatives that will nurture and improve an equitable sense of belonging, retention, success, and safety for all students. The group will engage the USF community to facilitate dialogue on this goal, coordinate with units to advance, develop and refine proposals, making them more concrete and actionable where needed, provide updates to the community, work collaboratively across the other working groups as needed, and generate recommendations for how best to implement the actions and objectives outlined in this goal.  Specifically, the working group is asked to develop recommendations that achieve the following:

  • Develop concrete and actionable next steps for providing a radically inclusive, international and welcoming campus
  • Prioritize the objectives and action items to achieve goal #3
  • Establish ways of assessing progress and success (KPIs or other quantitative or qualitative metrics)

The working group will provide periodic feedback on its progress to the Strategic Planning Advisory Council and submit its final report and recommendations to the Council to be integrated into the broader strategic plan implementation process.

Goal 3

PROVIDE A RADICALLY INCLUSIVE, INTERNATIONAL, AND WELCOMING CAMPUS EXPERIENCE that propels students to realize their full potential as leaders, social change agents, creators, practitioners, and lifelong learners.

Objectives Actions
1. Improve equitable sense of belonging, retention, and success for all students.
  1. Provide formation experiences and co-curricular programs for all students that deepen understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity, intersectionality, and social justice, and the development of global awareness and anti-racism knowledge and competencies.
  2. Charge a revitalized Retention, Persistence, and Student Equity Committee to develop a comprehensive plan to improve retention and graduation rates and address policies and practices that undermine student success, equitable academic outcomes, and students’ sense of belonging.
  3. Increase the participation of first generation students, Pell Grant eligible students, students with disabilities, and students from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups in summer bridge and first-year experience programs, including living-learning communities, first-year seminars, and USF 101.
  4. Expand high-impact practices and resources to support diverse student affinity groups, strengthen cross-group community building, and increase efficiency of shared resources and support.
  5. Strengthen initiatives to enhance the success, belonging, and inclusion of international students.
2. Address our students’ housing, food security, and holistic mental health needs.
  1. Evaluate and expand student housing at our Hilltop campus to meet the needs of our diverse student population.
  2. Expand programs and resources for alleviating student food and housing insecurity.
  3. Extend support for the mental health and holistic wellness of our students.
3. Provide a climate free of sexual, gender, and racial violence, using a compassionate survivor-centered and trauma-informed approach.
  1. Expand proactive and mandatory education on harassment and sexual, gender, and racial violence to faculty, librarians, students, and staff.
  2. Promote the responsibility of the entire USF committee to keep our campuses safe by providing education and bystander training to challenge violence in all forms.
  3. Re-evaluate and enhance support services for survivors of violence.
4. Measure and improve the return on investment of a USF education and enhance the upward social and economic mobility of USF graduates.
  1. Improve how we gather and leverage data related to student post-graduation outcomes and alumni careers.
  2. Document and make visible the ways a USF education provides quality-of-life and earnings advantages to our graduates.
  3. Leverage alumni, industry, and government connections for mentoring, externships and employment opportunities that enhance the value of a USF education.
5. Develop creative, responsive, and collaborative data-informed strategies to expand undergraduate and graduate enrollment.
  1. Develop a comprehensive integrated strategic enrollment plan that addresses all aspects of the student experience, from recruitment to post-graduation outcomes.
  2. Rebuild total enrollment to 11,000: undergraduate enrollment to 6,500 and graduate enrollment to 4,500.
  3. Launch an international board of advisors to expand USF’s global network, presence, and visibility, and support international student recruitment and international alumni engagement.
  4. Establish a cross-campus working group to improve transition from enrollment decision to matriculation at USF.
  5. Develop initiatives to address equity gaps and support excellence and belonging for Latinx, Asian/Asian American, and Indigenous students, faculty, and staff, and better serve the educational aspirations of our diverse students.
  6. Create a comprehensive diversity recruitment plan for Black-identified, Latinx-identified, and Asian-identified students.
  7. Develop a Transfer Student Success and Belonging Initiative to improve the transfer student experiences and address the growing opportunities available to community college students.