Making Excellence Inclusive:
Diversity, Inclusion, and Institutional Renewal

Making Excellence Inclusive is designed to help colleges and universities fully integrate their diversity and educational quality efforts and embed them into the core of academic mission and institutional functioning. Through this initiative, AAC&U re-envisions diversity and inclusion as a multi-layered process through which we achieve excellence in learning; research and teaching; student development; institutional functioning; local and global community engagement; workforce development; and more.

Key Definitions

Diversity: Individual differences (e.g., personality, learning styles, and life experiences) and group/social  differences (e.g., race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, and ability as well as cultural, political, religious, or other affiliations) that can be engaged in the service of learning.

Inclusion: The active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity—in people, in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum, and in communities (intellectual, social, cultural, geographical) with which individuals might connect—in ways that increase one’s awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication, and empathic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and institutions.

Briefing Papers

• Making Diversity Work on Campus: A Research-Based Perspective, by Jeffrey Milem, Mitchell Chang, and Anthony Antonio;
• Achieving Equitable Educational Outcomes with All Students: The Institution's Roles and Responsibilities, by Georgia Bauman, Letitia Bustillos, Estela Bensimon, M. Christopher Brown, and RoSusan Bartee;
• Toward a Model of Inclusive Excellence and Change in Post-Secondary Institutions, by Damon Williams, Joseph Berger, and Shederick McClendon.

Making Excellence Inclusive is housed within two AAC&U program offices—the Office of Education and Institutional Renewal and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Global Initiatives—and is led by AAC&U Vice President Alma Clayton-Pedersen.