Bard College
PA-5: 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.

All new faculty are required to participate in an orientation session that includes DEI training. In addition, they are required to complete an online training in sex and gender sensitivity. Starting this calendar year, all faculty will be required to complete an online module in DEI. As part of the Committee for Faculty and Curricular Development series, all faculty are invited to workshops on inclusive pedagogy, microaggressions, and an ongoing reading series on topics related to race, gender, class, neurodiversity. In addition, the Faculty Diversity Committee, a standing committee of the college, has an ongoing commitment to addressing institutional diversity issues from a faculty perspective. Since fall of 2019, the CIE annually hosts a book club focused on a relevant DEI issue. The Dean of Inclusive Excellence collaborates with a multitude of campus entities to tailor inclusion-related programs to specific disciplines, departments, clubs, and other venues of co-curricular learning. Furthermore, the Student Government, the Title IX Coordinator/Associate Dean for Gender Equity Office, and Office of Equity and Inclusion partner to facilitate cross-campus programming on the understanding race, class, gender, sexuality, religion and inclusivity at a rural, predominately white institution. The college strives to incorporate the development of cultural competence into the daily teachings and practices of the academy so that it is part of the cultural fabric of the institution and not the sole responsibility of a particular office or program. The Language and Thinking program are requirements of all Bard students. Since the Fall 2019, all students are required to take a module of the Difference and Justice Curriculum. In addition, as of the Fall 2019, all incoming first-year students are required to complete an online module in Equity and Diversity. All students are invited to attend an annual Difference and Justice Symposium where they participate in presentations/workshops on Difference and Justice-related coursework with the entirety of the Bard network. This includes the Bard High School Early Colleges (BHSECs) located in Manhattan, NY; Queens, NY; Newark, NJ; Cleveland, OH; Baltimore, MD; and Washington, DC. The DJ Symposium was inaugurated in the Fall of 2018. ALL STUDENTS MUST TAKE: 1) at least one course designated Difference and Justice (D&J) as part of their distribution requirements before graduation, 2) a D&J module as part of orientation for incoming students, and 3) an online training module in Difference, Equity, and Inclusion as part of orientation for incoming students. SOME STUDENTS ATTEND: a yearly D&J Symposium (featuring student presentations inspired by D&J courses) to which all students are invited.