Goal 5

Serve as a model to demonstrate how gender, racial and cultural diversity strengthen a university and society

Changing demographics and globalization of perspective are transforming institutions and the workplace. It is imperative that all UAF students and employees embrace and respect diversity across gender, race, culture and disability status in both academic and employment environments. Commitment to recruitment and retention of minority students, faculty and staff is crucial for success. While UAF currently enjoys a richly diverse student body, faculty and staff diversity should be noticeably increased by the year 2005. With the following strategies, UAF will foster a campus climate that encourages a safe, honest and respectful examination of issues of diversity and demonstrates how diversity can strengthen institutions and society.

1. Enhance recruitment and retention of underrepresented faculty, staff and students (including women, minorities and individuals addressed in the Americans with Disabilities Act).
   1. Institute accountability measures to document and report a unit’s efforts in recruitment and retention.
   2. Provide and ensure access to intervention services and resources for students, faculty and staff who experience emotional, cognitive, physical, sensory or other disabilities.
   3. Ensure student, faculty and staff knowledge of and compliance with federal and state laws through provision of ongoing programs to encourage dialogue pertinent to these issues.
   4. Encourage university-wide synergy in the promotion of effective and meaningful diversity awareness through coordination and collaboration of efforts that currently provide diversity support to the UAF community.
   5. Provide educational opportunities annually for prejudice reduction and sensitivity training for faculty, staff and students to include utilization of academic courses designed to encourage diversity and multiculturalism.
2. Infuse diversity into the curriculum.
   1. Establish a formal review process to critique current academic curricula and suggest areas of improvement.
   2. Generate substantive reports of departmental efforts and successes to infuse diversity in the curriculum and classroom in order to assist others in similar achievement.