Elon University
PA-5: Diversity and Equity Coordination

Elon has a new Division of Inclusive Excellence led by the Vice President and Associate Provost for Inclusive Excellence and includes three additional leadership roles: Director of Inclusive Excellence Education and Development, Director of Inclusive Excellence for Graduate and Professional Education, and Dean of Student Inclusive Excellence. This leadership team works collectively to lead Elon in the new strategic plan around diversity, inclusion and equity efforts.
The Vice President and Associate Provost for Inclusive Excellence serves in the senior staff role as the university’s Chief Diversity Officer providing vision, leadership and strategic coordination of university resources in accomplishing its inclusive excellence goals. The Director of Inclusive Excellence Education and Development supports and provides educational opportunities for faculty and staff around inclusive community efforts and oversees the university Bias and Harassment Reporting and Response System. The Director of Inclusive Excellence for Graduate and Professional Education leads inclusive and anti-oppressive efforts to support students, faculty, staff, alumni and other community members who participate in the graduate and professional programs. The Dean of Student Inclusive Excellence oversees Student Diversity Education and supports identity offices (e.g., the Center for Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity Education [CREDE] and the Gender and LGBTQIA Center [GLC]) in the Division of Student Life.
University administrators with dual reports to the Vice President and Associate Provost for Inclusive Excellence with official duties of supporting and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in their respective roles:
•Associate Dean of Admissions for Diversity and Access (Admissions)
•Associate Athletics Director and Senior Woman’s Administrator (Athletics)
•Communications Specialist for Inclusive Excellence (University Communications)
•Director of HR Compliance, Equal Opportunity & Title IX (Human Resources)
Faculty and administrative staff who lead Social Justice & Civic Engagement Programs also report to the Vice President and Associate Provost for Inclusive Excellence in their respective roles:
•Director of Black Lumen Project
•Director of Civic Engagement Scholars
•Faculty Fellow for Civic Engagement
•Program Coordinator for History & Memory
•Director of Project Pericles
•Associate Director of Project Pericles
Elon also has the President’s Advisory Council on Inclusive Excellence (PACIE) founded in February 2020. The President’s Advisory Council on Inclusive Excellence serves as an on-campus advisory body for the President and is comprised of action-oriented subcommittees of faculty and staff, who serve as institutional champions for inclusive excellence. The council meets regularly to align strategic initiatives and emerging topics with a culture of inclusive excellence. The PACIE subcommittees include:
•Campus climate and assessment, which focuses on collecting, analyzing, interpreting and reporting data, as well as communicating campus climate information to members of the Elon community.
•Education and development, which focuses on supporting intercultural learning opportunities for students, as well as professional development for colleagues.
•Infrastructure and policies, which focuses on building and stewarding institutional resources for inclusive excellence initiatives, as well as examining institutional policies and practices related to equity.
Inclusive Excellence is Elon’s framing of diversity, equity, inclusion and other constructs that support belonging and well-being. A framework was developed conceptualizing how Elon will advance Inclusive Excellence under the Boldly Elon strategic plan for 2030. Inclusive Excellence at Elon is defined as the shared responsibility of all members of the Elon community to act deliberately toward equitable outcomes. The following three pillars highlight Elon’s commitment to pursue and enact Inclusive Excellence:
•People - a commitment to being a learning community grounded in the collective strength derived from people of diverse identities, abilities and perspectives.
•Paradigm - a commitment to developing an inclusive worldview and pluralistic orientation reflected in pedagogies, programs and policies that bolster success to thrive in an increasingly diverse and complex world.
•Praxis - a commitment to translate developing knowledge to action with shared accountability that leads to positive cross-cultural engagement at all times and in all places.

1) Several offices on campus provide training for students, faculty and staff (including administrators) in the areas of ethnic and racial diversity, sexual and gender diversity, awareness of bias, cultural communication and reporting bias.
•The Division of Inclusive Excellence team has been intentional with offering educational sessions about the new Inclusive Excellence framework to various academic, administrative, and student groups to support community members’ development when incorporating and enacting diversity, equity, and inclusion goals.
•Elon requires all first-year students (including international students) to complete an online Diversity and Inclusion module before beginning at Elon (started with the 2015-16 school year). In Fall 2021, this online module was extended to new incoming undergraduates in the new Nursing program and incoming graduate and professional students in the following programs:
-Masters of Higher Education program
-First-year law students and Law School Academic Fellows
-Interactive Media Program
-Physician Assistance Studies
-Physical Therapy Program
-Business Program
-Business Analytics Program
-Accounting Program
•The Office of Inclusive Excellence Education and Development offers tailored Inclusive Lens Departmental Workshops specific to department needs. Inclusive Lens Workshops offer the opportunity for a department, division, or academic or co-curricular area to work with the Director of Inclusive Excellence Education and Development to craft a workshop that addresses an identified need for introduction or deeper engagement with issues of diversity and inclusion. This approach has been used for units across campus including Office of Leadership and Professional Development, Staff Advisory Council, Student Life, Admissions, Finance and Administration, Auxiliary/Dining Services, Student Government, and a number of academic departments.
•Human Resources administers the online Preventing Harassment and Discrimination module for faculty and staff about anti-bias and compliance training required by the university.
•The School of Health Sciences (SHS) developed a Faculty and Staff Diversity Committee that offers monthly faculty development workshops about health equity topics and coordinates passive programing on building TV screens with informative slides recognizing monthly identity, history or heritage months. SHS also has a Student Diversity Committee that offers a monthly student development series - Diversi-Tea.
•The Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education and the Center for Race, Ethnicity, & Diversity Education (CREDE) coordinates the Intercultural Learning Certificate Program (ILCP) for all teacher education students. This certificate program offers an experiential deep dive into issues of social justice, inclusion, equity, and diversity through an intentional structure of an orientation session, academic coursework, co-curricular engagement, experiential learning project, capstone and a digital portfolio capturing a student's collective experiences. Students are a part of a cohort and can take classes, attend programs/events, engage in reflective writing, meet 1:1 with CREDE staff members, complete an Academic Service-Learning course or ELR (Experiential Learning Requirement) workbook and attend a retreat.
•Elon's academic and co-curricular spaces offer workshops specific to certain constructs. Some examples include:
-The Center for Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity Education (CREDE) offers a monthly discussion about race and its intersections for faculty and staff, a summer race reflections lunch series for faculty and staff and a number of workshops for students including DEEP, which is the CREDE’s signature program for social justice, and The Big 8, which is an introduction to social identities where students work together to understand these social identities, and reflect on their own experiences that were shaped by their multiple identities.
-The Center for Design Thinking in partnership with the Center for Race, Ethnicity, & Diversity Education develops and delivers the Redesigning for Equity and Social Justice Workshop Series which address anti-racism and anti-oppression strategies. Workshops in the series include Addressing Implicit Bias, Design for Liberatory Cycles, Cultivating Anti-Racist Practices.
-The Director of Disabilities Resources hosts a disability awareness month with programming and training sessions for faculty and staff (including administrators).
-The Gender and LGBTQIA Center hosts Ally trainings for students and colleagues.
-The Center for Access and Success offers sessions on working with high financial need students, and the Global Education Center offers sessions on international students on campus.
-The Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life offers lunch and learn sessions on major world religions, hosts a student multifaith conference, and programs about religion and its intersections.
-The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning also hosts training sessions and book reading groups for faculty on inclusive classrooms.
2) Elon offers a number of majors, minors and courses that focus on cultural competence including minors in Poverty and Social Justice studies, African and African American Studies, Latin American Studies, Asian Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexualities Studies.
3) The Division of Inclusive Excellence launched a new website which serves as a resource hub for all institutional cultural competence, anti-oppression, anti-racism, and social inclusion activities for undergraduate and graduate students, and faculty and staff at all levels.