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Recruitment, Retention, and Inclusive Climate

Inclusive Climate

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion defines inclusive excellence as:

Institutional excellence that fully integrates values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in all aspects of its work:

  1. Mission, vision, and strategic planning
  2. Curriculum and co-curriculum
  3. Campus climate and community
  4. Infrastructure, policies, and processes

By intersecting the values of Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, Equity-Mindedness, and LMU's Mission, we work to cultivate an institutional climate that promotes inclusive excellence.

As part of a broad effort to fulfill our mission to promote educational excellence, the education of the whole person, the service of faith, and the promotion of justice, we will:

  • Promote a diverse LMU community at all levels: boards, administrators, faculty, staff, and students.
  • Support academic success for all students, acknowledging the importance of retaining and graduating students from underrepresented groups and first-generation college students.
  • Support Faculty and Staff retention and promotion, recognizing the importance of underrepresented groups.
  • Enhance curriculum, pedagogy, scholarship, and creative work, to involve students and faculty in the learning process and to prepare them to engage issues of diversity as concerned citizens of the world.
  • Provide ongoing education and development about creating an inclusive climate for the university community where all can thrive.
  • Provide resources to establish and sustain a culture of evidence that emphasizes assessment, critical analysis, and identifying solutions.

Recruiting and Hiring

Recruiting and Hiring for Teacher-Scholars for Mission

Colleges and universities without racial and ethnic diversity in their faculty drastically limit their ability to provide educational experiences that produce "an empowered, informed, and responsible student capable of negotiating the inevitable differences in a diverse society" (University of Arizona, 2006). Conversely, institutions with diverse faculty provide significant benefits for everyone in the campus community.

Not only can a diverse faculty prepare students to live and work in an increasingly complex global society, but a professoriate marked by diversity:

  1. "promotes cognitive, social and emotional growth and development in students,
  2. increases and raises the level of intellectual discussion within the faculty, and
  3. adds multiple perspectives, theories, and approaches to scholarship and the curriculum that students consume" (Milem and Hakuta, 2000).

Thus, the Recruiting and Hiring Teacher-Scholars for Mission Initiative includes systematic efforts to recruit and hire an ethnically diverse, gender-balanced faculty which enhances the university's educational goals, strategic objectives, and adds to the overall quality of the institution. Simultaneously, the Initiative provides professional development for search committee members on a variety of topics including the history of LMU, reflections on LMU's Catholic identity, the Catholic intellectual tradition, ethnic diversity and religious identity in U.S. Catholic universities, benefits of faculty diversity, the definition of hiring faculty for mission, and legal and ethical principles and strategies for recruiting and hiring faculty.

Visit Provost Poon's faculty resources for more information.

Recruitment & Hiring Resources