Today, the demand for inclusion in undergraduate science education is situated within a shifting sociopolitical context that is: (1) increasingly complex and global, (2) influenced by an increasing number of confounding variables, (3) continuously redefined by the changing nature of the problems at hand and the criteria by which we define successful solutions, and (4) undergirded by the troubling history of race relations in America.

This contemporary reality requires that we boldly embrace a more dynamic conceptualization of excellence in undergraduate science education—one that advances innovation and rightfully positions inclusion as its necessary precondition.