UCI Giving Day 2021

The Office of Inclusive Excellence drives the centralized planning and collaborates with partners to envision and attain UCI’s efforts on equity, diversity, and inclusion. We bring passion, strategic vision, diverse expertise, and commitment to ensure the fundamental connections between inclusive excellence and advancing the campus’ mission as a public research university and community ally. To this end, the office advances campus accountability, develops and delivers evidence-based training and education, conducts responsive research, and builds and sustains partnerships within and beyond its borders.

This year, the Office of Inclusive Excellence launched the Black Thriving Initiative to recognize and respond to anti-Blackness as an existential threat to our mission as public research university. In depriving Black people of their full participation in society and in university life, anti-Blackness compromises UCI’s capacity to educate, discover, create, and heal. It therefore demands a whole university response. This response relies on each member of our campus community linking their future to the success of Black students, faculty and staff as well as alumni and communities served by UCI.

The Office of Inclusive Excellence also has spearheaded broader initiatives for UCI, implementing our Inclusive Excellence Action Plan, a UCI-wide effort focused on three pillars:

Your partnership with the Office of Inclusive Excellence is a vital step to broadening the reach of inclusive programming and engaging allies to achieve key action plan goals. Examples of the programs where your support is a key lever for change include:

UCI CONFRONTING EXTREMISM

Understanding extremism is a fundamental responsibility for citizenship in the 21st century. The scale and scope of extremism poses a threat to our civic institutions, democratic values and our very multi-cultural society. The program is designed to fortify our resilience as a campus community while advancing our commitment to inclusive excellence. 

UCI CHANCELLOR’S ADVANCE POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

Since hosting its first cohort of postdoctoral scholars in 2013, the UCI-funded Chancellor’s ADVANCE Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (CAPFP) has broadened access for diverse scholars to bring their expertise to bear on basic and applied research shaping our world. The UCI CAPFP provides research fellowships and faculty mentoring that are consequential to exceptional scholars in all fields. These future faculty members not only redefine their disciplines, but also bring pioneering research, teaching, and service to contribute to diversity and equal opportunity at the University of California through the students they mentor, and the practices that they demonstrate to advance inclusive excellence. 

CHANCELLOR’S INCUSIVE EXCELLENCE AWARDS

The Chancellor’s Inclusive Excellence Award is a two-year, non-renewable appointment that helps to yield outstanding new UCI Senate faculty – bringing these scholars to join the ranks of UCI’s assistant professors, associate professors, and professors or equivalent. The award recognizes the distinguished accomplishments of the recipients to advance inclusive excellence, providing $50,000 to awardees to support continued scholarship, pedagogy, and exemplary leadership to contribute to diversity, equity, and inclusion at UCI. An annual public forum engages the campus and community in conversations and explorations about the stellar research and awardee contributions.

INCLUSIVE EXCELLENCE CERTIFICATE PROGRAM

Launched in Fall 2019 with a core course on UCI as a Minority Thriving Institution, this program has involved more than 1,000 students, faculty, and staff. The program has expanded to include elective sections on “community” and “wellness,” while also offering trend-setting modules to create awareness about such topics as building allyship and countering anti-Black racism. The certificate program promises substantive debate and discussion about proactive strategies to advance inclusive excellence at UCI.  Each meeting is an invitation to explore how best to actualize diversity, equity, inclusion, and free speech on campus and beyond.

Thank you for taking the time to find out more about the UCI Office of Inclusive Excellence. Your gift today will help to advance community, thriving, and wellness at UCI. Thank you!