Plan 2008

INTRODUCTION

Commitment

Diversity of viewpoints, diversity of backgrounds, including gender and ethnic differences, as well as variety within academic specialties, are all vital components of the intellectual life of this great university. This not only contributes to the academic vitality of the campus, but also makes us more competitive among our peer institutions. While parts of the campus have made significant gains, our overall progress in reaching greater gender and ethnic diversity has been too modest. If we are to be successful in the future, we must tap the rich potential of all our citizens by incorporating them into our faculty, staff, and student body.

—David Ward, Chancellor, in A Vision for the Future, 1995

We at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have a tradition on which to build our continuing efforts to achieve a more diverse and welcoming campus. In particular we have made real progress in the past ten years, stimulated by the 1988 Madison Plan, the umbrella University of Wisconsin System Design for Diversity, and the 1993 Madison Commitment. In creating this plan as part of the University of Wisconsin System’s Plan 2008, we have taken stock of what we have accomplished and have tried to analyze what we need to do differently in the coming ten years. Our conclusion is that the commitment of people will make the biggest difference. We have leadership and commitment from the University of Wisconsin Regents and President Katharine Lyall, and from our alumni and the Wisconsin business community, all of whom recognize the need for our university to act vigorously to prepare students from all ethnic backgrounds to live and work in a racially and culturally diverse world. We on this campus must now all commit ourselves to working steadily and speedily to achieve the goals of this plan.

Guiding Principles

Goals The actions recommended in the UW-Madison Plan 2008 are to achieve the goals of significantly improving the representation and academic success of members of four targeted ethnic groups, namely, American Indian, African-American, Latino/a, and Southeast Asian-American, among the student body, the faculty and the staff; to improve the classroom and social climate of this campus for those groups; and to increase the depth of understanding by the large majority of us who are not in those groups for their values, customs, and experiences.

Cost We recommend continuing existing and initiating some new pre-college and recruitment programs, scholarships, fellowships, curricular changes, faculty and staff hires, assessment, all of which cost money. We do not want to rob the programs we already support, some of which have serious budget shortfalls. We must continuously work to obtain funds from the State Legislature for the UW System Plan 2008 budget, which was unanimously approved by the Board of Regents. In Fiscal Years 1999-2001, the initial Plan 2008 years, the Plan is seriously under-funded. While this situation may improve over the years, we must be realistic in our expectations of funding. Yet we will not omit a recommendation because it may not be funded. We have been guided by optimistic realism in planning the phasing in of new money.

People The success of our goals and programs depends on people’s renewed efforts, even more so when we are under-funded. We cannot increase the number of targeted ethnic-group students, nor their academic success, without improving the campus climate, and money cannot buy that. The support of students is particularly critical to the success of recruiting and retention. Faculty and staff will have to make diversity a higher priority than they have during the past ten years. This means a time commitment on the part of virtually everyone on campus; and we have tried to identify something which everyone can do, toward the end of the recommendations.

Participation in the process The Madison Plan 2008 is the result of nearly one academic year of intense discussion and planning by a large number of faculty, staff, students, plus alumni and community representatives, including hearings on campus and in the community, and consultation with student organizations and many individuals. The three governance bodies saw two drafts of the plan and passed the resolutions in Appendix L. We have been committed to an open process and have incorporated as many suggestions as possible. Most of the meetings are listed in Appendix N, and many of the participants are listed in Appendix O.

Living document This document will not cover all circumstances, nor stay current, over nine years. Some parts will become obsolete or be impossible to attain. We have presented several initiatives, many recommendations to continue and strengthen current programs and practices, and some ideas to be studied and possibly implemented in the future. Our guiding principle is to do everything we can to implement our initiatives and recommendations and to include a section of worthy ideas, so they will not be lost. We are recommending ongoing discussion, with appropriate revision, of the goals and strategies during the whole period of the plan’s operation.

What we mean by Diversity

Why we must work for greater diversity on campus

Diversity broadly includes not only race and gender but the connections between these and other sources of identity such as religion, ethnicity, age, sexual [orientation], class and ability. It encourages forms of learning that deepen and enrich the ways we connect across our differences. The American Association of Colleges and Universities "challenges higher education to think more deeply about what individuals learn from their experience of campus ethos - and how that learning in turn constrains or enriches the quality and vitality of American communities". The research shows that when a campus makes-and is viewed by its students as making-a significant commitment to diversity, all students gain educationally.

—American Commitments: Diversity, Democracy, And Liberal Learning,
The American Association of Colleges and Universities, 1998, Page 2

We identify three reasons why this plan is important:

1. to provide educational success for students from targeted ethnic groups in our state and nation who still suffer the social, economic, and educational consequences of discrimination;
2. to diversify the students, faculty, and staff to better reflect the overall population distribution, which has educational value for all of us by providing a multitude of perspectives and the opportunity for healthy inter-group relations;
3. to better prepare our students to be more competitive for future work and career possibilities in a global economy and to be better citizens in a multi-cultural global community.

Focus of this plan The four ethnic groups targeted in the UW System’s Plan 2008 are American Indian, African-American, Latino/a, and Southeast Asian-American. We have aimed the plan at recruitment, retention, and development of those four ethnic groups, though achieving our goals will benefit all students, faculty, and staff. We are under no illusions that we achieve diversity solely by achieving a campus population proportionately representative of those groups. Diversity means the recognition by all of us of all the social, educational, economic, and emotional biases racial and ethnic background causes, and the willingness to work to eradicate them.

Other groups in society who experience discrimination and exclusion include women in some fields; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons; and disabled persons. We call for an improved campus climate and a deeper understanding of the situations of those groups, as well as of the four groups listed above. We strongly support the work of the three shared governance standing committees whose charge is to advocate for those groups and recommend campus policy and actions pertaining to them. We recommend that the campus treat their recommendations with the same seriousness as those in this plan.

Terminology Word usage continues to change in regard to the ethnic groups listed above. For example, in Wisconsin, American Indian is used in preference to Native American. Our guidelines on this subject are:

1. People of color, rather than minority, is currently favored by those ethnic groups as a categorical word.
2. We will mean people of color when we refer to students, faculty, and staff in this report, unless we say otherwise. Specifically we will mean members of the four ethnic groups.

Statements

From its earliest days, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has sought to create an inclusive educational atmosphere. The founders of the university believed - and 150 years later we still share that belief - that a diverse campus is central to the educational experience.

The university was founded to provide opportunities for all the people of Wisconsin. As part of that mission, the university specifically strives to "serve the needs of women, minority, disadvantaged, disabled and nontraditional students and seek racial and ethnic diversification of the student body and the professional faculty and staff."¹ UW-Madison must "embody, through its policies and programs, respect for, and commitment to, the ideas of a pluralistic, multiracial, open and democratic society".

As chancellor, I remain resolute in my commitment to these goals, which are embodied in Plan 2008.

There is compelling evidence that education in a racially diverse setting is qualitatively better than education in the absence of that diversity.² Our alumni and our friends in the corporate community tell us that our graduates must be prepared to live in a multicultural society and compete in a multicultural global economy. We must continue to make diversity at all levels of campus a high priority. For Plan 2008 to succeed, faculty, staff and students must all contribute their time and energy. Campus-wide plans must be implemented at college and departmental levels. Members of the administration, as well as shared governance committees³, will oversee the implementation of many of the recommendations in this plan. We will establish an oversight committee and mechanisms to help gauge progress. We will have accountability at all levels.

We are grateful to the hundreds of people who participated in the process of creating this plan. Particularly inspiring has been the participation of students. It is now up to us to choose some portion of the plan to which we can each commit our own efforts. I have my own special interest in ensuring the success of the PEOPLE⁴ program, a new partnership with Milwaukee Public Schools and the Milwaukee business community to recruit more students of color from the state’s largest city, and in exploring the freshman seminar idea recommended in this and other reports.

—David Ward, Chancellor

The success of Plan 2008 depends on widespread action by individuals and campus units, and on day-to-day implementation by our staff. The rate of change in a large institution is proportional to the effort put into making that change. We have developed an administrative infrastructure and programs over the past decade that I think are up to the task. One associate vice chancellor and one assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs are charged with coordinating and expediting diversity programs, including student services, training, planning, and assessing. Minority and Disadvantaged Coordinators and Equity and Diversity Committees have been established in every school and college to supplement campus-wide standing committees.

In the end, our ability to institute change will come from classroom and one-on-one interactions among faculty and staff colleagues, and students.

I want to acknowledge and thank co-chairs Associate Vice Chancellor Paul Barrows and Professor Bernice Durand, and also Dr. Ruby Paredes, for organizing the process and editing this plan. In addition, I want to thank the very large number of students, staff, faculty, alumni, and community members who took time to contribute to the plan.

—John Wiley, Provost

It is reassuring to know that the State of Wisconsin, the Board of Regents, the UW System Administration and all of our campus governance bodies remain steadfastly committed to advancing diversity efforts on our campus and at all the other UW System institutions. Taxes paid by all the citizens of this state and nation support our public land-grant university, allowing it to be one of the best institutions of higher education in the world. Central to our mission and the Wisconsin Idea is the notion that the University of Wisconsin-Madison exists to be of service to those citizens -- particularly to all the residents of this state.

The first umbrella 10-year plan, the 1988 Design for Diversity, gave leadership and focus to our efforts to diversify our institution. Many new and important initiatives were established that diversified the curriculum, increased the enrollment of undergraduate, graduate and professional students, and increased the hiring of faculty. While the scope of initiatives and accomplishments undertaken during that first decade is impressive, what remains to be done is daunting.

For the next 10-year period, under Plan 2008, we must work harder to meet challenges in public education in Wisconsin and across the nation to build the pool of qualified students who will be successful at this university. We continue to fall short in closing the gaps in the retention and graduation rates between majority students and students of color. But we are doing better than the national average, are situated near the top of our peer group in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation⁵, and we are leading the rest of the UW System. We have spent portions of two academic years assessing what we have and have not accomplished in the past ten years⁶. Many of the recommendations in this plan are already underway because of that process, including the PEOPLE program. With everyone pitching in, we can continue to make good progress in providing a diversity of individuals, perspectives and experiences that will enrich the quality of education and the educational experience for everyone on this campus.

—Paul Barrows, Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Services and Campus Diversity, Co-Chair of Steering Committee for Madison Plan 2008

Successful diversity programs in universities and corporations have in common a sustained involvement by all of their people, not only their leaders. The success of Plan 2008 hinges on investing major additional resources in pre-college and bridge programs, scholarships and fellowships, curriculum development, and faculty and staff positions. It also is dependent on every faculty member, staff member and student devoting significant time and effort to help with some part of the plan -- by building friendships among people of different ethnic backgrounds, helping parents and teachers prepare children for college, engaging together in cooperative classroom or extra-curricular projects.

UW-Madison has a foundation of legislation⁷ and programs devoted to increasing diversity. To make this plan succeed better than previous plans, we believed it was critical to have extensive and broad input. The constructive nature of our meetings and forums was essential to our process, and a pleasure to participate in. We owe much to the many students, members of the faculty and staff, and the Madison and alumni communities for the time and thought they put into this plan. The sifting and winnowing eventually fell to the three editors, and I shall be forever thankful that Dr. Paul Barrows and Dr. Ruby Paredes worked as many hours as it took, while maintaining patience and humor. It has been a rewarding experience.

—Bernice Durand, Professor of Physics, Co-Chair of Steering Committee for Madison Plan 2008

¹ Self-Study for the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, University of Wisconsin-Madison, January 1999, pages 1 and 2.

² The Compelling Need for Diversity in Higher Education, University of Michigan, January, 1999, pages 1 and 2.

³ These are the University Committee, the Academic Staff Executive Committee, the Associated Students of Madison, the Committtee on the Academic Affairs of Minority/Disadvantaged Students, the COmmittee on Student Policies and Non-Academic Programs, the Advisiory Committee to the Equity and Diversity Resource Center, the Committee on Undergraduate Recrutiment and Financial Aid, and the Committee on Undergraduate Education.

⁴ PEOPLE means Pre-College Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence.

⁵ Member institutions of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation are Chicago, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, UW-Madison.

⁶ See Diversity Update and the Recruiting and Retention Strategic Plans, available from the office of the Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Services and Campus Diversity.

⁷ See Appendix J.

File last updated: December 14, 2005
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