Mission, Charge, Responsibilities & Values

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ DEIAB Committee (CLAS DEIAB Committee) is an advisory committee whose faculty and staff members have been appointed to serve a two year and four-month long term (January 9, 2023 – April 30, 2025).

Affiliates, tenure-track faculty, tenured faculty, and full-time AP and PSS staff (30 hours or more per week) can be members of the committee.

The committee currently consists of 9 faculty and staff members in CLAS. They are, listed in alphabetical order:

Keigh-Cee Bell
Diane Laughlin, Co-Chair
Mitzi Loving-Johnson
Gwyn Madden
Dana Munk
Edgar Page, Co-Chair
Doris Penn
Jeffrey Rothstein
Richard Yidana

Associate Dean Dwayne Tunstall serves as the ex officio member of the committee.

 

The mission of the CLAS DEIAB Committee is to foster faculty, staff, and student success and belonging in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The committee’s mission aligns with the CLAS vision statement and the first and third commitments of the College’s Vision, Commitments, and Action Plan, 2021-2025 (see p. 5).

• College’s Vision Statement: “Through our commitment to liberal education, CLAS strives to be an inclusive and equitable community of inquiry where students, staff and faculty collaborate to pursue and create knowledge, to enact global citizenship, and to engage and support our many communities. (Jan. 2022)”
• Commitment 1: Centering Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access – “We value and work to foster a community in which inclusion, equity, access, and respect for difference sustain, and are sustained by, a liberal education that is accessible to and beneficial for all.”
• Commitment 3: Creating a Workplace Where Faculty and Staff Can Thrive – “We value structures and processes that provide faculty and staff opportunities to develop as professionals and leaders, that support a reasonable balance of time and energy across all areas of our lives, and that provide opportunities to connect and build relationships. We value the life of the mind, in all its forms, and recognize that the creation of knowledge and the dissemination of knowledge are closely connected activities for teacher-scholars.”

 

The committee’s charge is to advise the CLAS Dean on promoting and making progress on initiatives related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and access in the College.

 

The committee responsibilities are:

• To make formal recommendations to the dean on policies, actions, and programs that support the College’s vision statement and the first and third commitments in its Vision, Commitments, and Action Plan, 2021-2025.
• To provide recommendations to the dean on best practices with respect to issues of culture, climate, equity, inclusion, and diversity in the College.
• To formulate and advocate for strategies that integrate inclusive teaching into CLAS curricula, as well as integrate inclusive advising practices into CLAS academic advising.

 

The committee’s values are:

• Inclusion.
• Equity.
• Belonging.
• Access/accessibility.

These values are defined in the “DEI-AB Working Definitions” section of the Division of Academic Affairs and the Division of Student Affairs’ Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility, and Belonging (DEI-AB) Framework document.