Approved March 2021
The History Department affirms its commitment to building and sustaining a genuinely diverse and inclusive environment for faculty, students, and staff. We commit to enhancing our programmatic practices in pedagogy, hiring, retention, and community engagement that are integral to this enterprise; and we resolve to develop new initiatives and practices based on scholarly evidence of how best to embody and exemplify inclusivity. We believe that success in these endeavors depends upon the collective efforts and resolve of the department, the college, and the campus.
Grounding Inclusive Excellence in the Discipline of History
The History Department actively supports the campus goals of inclusive excellence and the basic principles expressed in the IDEA plan.1 Convinced that that “inclusion” and “excellence” are mutually reinforcing principles, we strive to create a curriculum and an intellectual community that acknowledge and honor cultural, racial, ethnic, national, socioeconomic, religious, gender, sexual, and other differences. As historians, our scholarship and pedagogy are attentive to the persistence throughout human history of inequity in power relations. This disciplinary perspective provides an unparalleled resource for educating students to become global citizens. For these reasons, the History Department will continue to develop a global curriculum for undergraduate and graduate students alike and will continue to implement our common Student Learning Objectives, which explicitly affirm the centrality of diversity within our curriculum. The History Department’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is, in sum, fundamental to its core disciplinary enterprise.
Diversity in Student Body
We recognize that recruiting a diverse student body is as critical as building a global curriculum. To this end, we must strive to identify and develop resources to ensure diversity in the graduate and undergraduate student body. Our classrooms must be welcoming to and respectful of students from all backgrounds and identities. We must continue our efforts to improve pedagogical practices to enhance inclusivity in our classroom; to make the discipline of history transparent, accessible, and relatable to diverse groups of students; and to make clear that historical interpretation must be undergirded by evidence-based scholarship. Furthermore, we must strive to redefine and expand our definition of excellence in our assessment of student achievement to acknowledge diverse learning styles and life experiences. We must continue departmental outreach initiatives that encourage under-represented students to enroll at CU-Boulder and that make connections between CU and communities of color across the state.
Diversity in Faculty
To maximize our capacity to fulfill the educational and research goals outlined above, we must hire a faculty that embodies our commitment to intellectual, cultural, and social diversity, and examine and refresh our own hiring priorities and practices accordingly. In order to acquire necessary resources to maintain this positive momentum, we will actively seek substantive commitments from the campus and the college to support the kind of hiring and recruiting necessary to realize the goal of inclusive excellence in our department and across campus. Finally, we commit to reviewing our criteria for evaluation to make sure that our criteria for excellence in research, teaching, and service are consistent with and attentive to our commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Diversity in Staff
We acknowledge the important contributions our staff make in building and sustaining an inclusive environment and we commit to hiring, retaining, and recognizing in evaluation staff who are empathetic, supportive of our students and faculty, and committed to campus principles of equity and inclusion. When we conduct searches for staff we commit to work closely with Human Resources personnel and be attentive to hiring procedures best suited to equitable and diverse hiring. We must also continue to cultivate an environment of professional respect, consideration, and compassion for all faculty and staff.
1. The campus definition of inclusive excellence calls upon every unit to create “a welcoming and inclusive environment,” to deepen “our ability to share and to engage with diverse perspectives,” and to maximize “the success and inclusion of all students, staff and faculty” (posted on the website of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Community Engagement). The IDEA plan reinforces these basic principles. First, it affirms that “a diverse body of faculty, students, and staff is necessary for CU Boulder to fulfill its goal of serving the people of Colorado, the nation, and the world by bringing together a vibrant array of cultures, experiences, and perspectives.” Second, it calls upon the campus to support the hiring and retention of “diverse faculty, staff, and students who reflect the global society our students will lead” and encourages all units to build “a curriculum that fosters intercultural competence.”