Goal 6 Current Commitments:

• Extend Admission efforts to high schools in major urban areas that draw from a range of races and ethnicities
• Make changes in the allocation of aid resources to help address pervasive inequities present throughout much of higher education
• Increase the hiring of faculty, staff, and short-term employees from underrepresented groups and enhance retention efforts to ensure that new hires succeed and thrive
• Implement new hiring practices across the college to make diversity a priority and to minimize implicit bias
• Ensure the college’s changing demographics are reflected in the Board of Trustees and alumni and parent groups

To increase the compositional diversity of CC’s student body, the Office of Admission will extend its reach to high schools in major urban areas that draw from a range of races and ethnicities.

These efforts will also improve CC’s socioeconomic diversity. The college will communicate truthfully and transparently about the current characteristics of the student body and communicate the antiracism initiative as a set of transformative experiences designed to engage students in new ways of seeing and understanding the world.

The college is committed to raising funds and making significant changes in its allocation of aid resources to help address pervasive inequities present throughout much of higher education. As one example, the Campaign for Colorado College has set a goal of raising $100 million for financial aid, including $20 million for the Colorado Pledge, which supports Colorado students from low- and middle-income families by making a CC education as or more affordable than attending the state’s public flagship university. In addition, the college has committed to launching the Stroud Scholars initiative. This program will begin in Summer 2020 with its first class of 25 students from low-income families who have just completed their first year at an under-resourced Pikes Peak area high school. The college readiness program will support these students throughout their high school careers with summers on CC’s campus. Students who successfully complete the program will receive automatic admission and a full-need scholarship to CC. If the program is a success and we can raise additional funds, we will expand the Stroud Scholars initiative to include Denver students and Southwest Native American students.

On the faculty side, the provost and the dean of faculty are working to ensure that the diversity of CC’s faculty and curricular offerings continue to increase, and that faculty from underrepresented groups not only join the college but succeed and thrive.

This work includes both requiring and fostering the development of search processes that reduce implicit bias and result in more diverse candidate pools, investing in professional development and community resources for faculty of color, and implementing a new hiring initiative that seeks to recruit faculty from under-represented groups at the tenured level. Data show that cluster-based hiring of senior faculty is one of the fastest and most important ways to not only diversify faculty ranks, but also ensure success at the junior level, because senior faculty are essential for both mentorship and for reducing burdens too often borne by pre-tenure faculty members. In addition, tenured faculty bring both the experience and job security necessary to help advance antiracism goals more broadly. Searches under this program have begun, and we intend to continue this hiring initiative for at least three more years so that a significant new cohort of tenured faculty with representation across the college is in place by 2023.

The college will also take advantage of the Block Plan structure to increase shorter-term but meaningful engagements from distinguished visiting teacher-scholars and to host additional diversity, equity, and inclusion fellows in various co-curricular programs who can also contribute to these goals. Also, while the college has made progress since 2011 in hiring a more diverse faculty, some departments do not reflect that progress. The dean of the faculty will work with those departments to ensure their hiring processes employ best practices for recruiting a diverse faculty.

Increasing compositional diversity will also be a priority in staff hiring and retention, with both the associate vice president of human resources and the new diversity and inclusion leader for human resources carrying responsibility for ensuring that hiring practices across the college make diversity a priority and are designed to minimize implicit bias. Finally, and of importance, the Board of Trustees and alumni and parent groups should reflect the changing composition of the student body, faculty, and staff.

Hiring diverse faculty and staff must be complemented with focused retention efforts. The first initiative for our new diversity and inclusion leader in Human Resources will be to develop a set of initiatives to support faculty and staff of color as they transition to working at CC and living in Colorado Springs. The latter will include a new program to build community for CC’s faculty and staff of color with other professionals of color in Colorado Springs.

Compositional diversity is an essential step, but it must be coupled with creating an inclusive environment in which structural racism, overt and implicit bias, and other forms of inequity are minimized. That is why the central goals of this implementation plan focus on inclusion and antiracism.

Parties accountable:

Student diversity – Board of Trustees, president, vice president for enrollment, and vice president for advancement. Faculty diversity – Board of Trustees, president, provost, and dean of the faculty.

Staff diversity – Board of Trustees, president, senior vice president for finance and administration, associate vice president for human resources, and new human resources position for diversity and inclusion.

Board of Trustees and Alumni Association Council Diversity – Board of Trustees, vice president for advancement, and director of alumni and family relations

Updated, August 2021:

• The Colorado Pledge program was implemented in 2020, yeilding 134 admitted students from Colorado, 26% of whom qualified for the program. 
• Hiring diverse faculty and staff is an on-going commitment of Colorado College.
• In June 2020, the college hired new leaders for senior associate dean for equity, inclusion, and faculty development and senior associate dean of students for diversity, equity & inclusion, and named an interim director of diversity, equity, and inclusion for staff.
• This associate vice president for human resources postion no longer exists. The accountable party is now the senior vice president for finance and administration. 
• The new staff diversity and inclusion leader is now part of finance and administration.