Bard College
PA-4: Diversity and Equity Coordination

The Dean for Inclusive Excellence partners with a broad range of faculty, staff, and students in order to move the institution toward policies that promote great diversity,equity and inclusion. Along with several other senior administrators the Dean co-chairs the Council for Inclusive Excellence. The Council works on institutional inclusivity initiatives: faculty orientation, campus-wide programming, student leadership, and off-campus engagement. The Council provides leadership and vision in collaboration with the Difference and Media Project, Bard Student Government, Chaplaincy, Office of the Dean of Student Affairs, and faculty leadership committees. The Bard College Council for Inclusive Excellence approaches diversity, inclusion, and equity as central to a liberal arts education and critical to the wellbeing of a democratic culture. The Council includes faculty, staff, and students whose work focuses broadly on learning, teaching, student development, institutional functioning, and engagement in local and global communities.

In partnership with the Center for Faculty Curricular Development, faculty are offered workshops on inclusive pedagogy, micro-aggressions, and an ongoing reading series on topics related to race, gender, class, neurodiversity. The dean partners with individual programs to tailor inclusion related topics to the disciplines. The Multicultural Diversity Committee (a sub-group of student government), the Title IX office, as well as the Office of Inclusive Excellence partner with many student groups to offer programming related to understanding race, class, gender, sexuality religion and neurodiversity at a rural, predominately white institution. The college aims to weave cultural competence development and learning into a broad range of campuses office and activities so that it becomes a part of the cultural fabric of the institution rather than stand alone discrete training.