St. Norbert College: Shining a Light on Diversity & Inclusion

By Jennifer Bonds-Raacke and Billy Korinko - St. Norbert College

The provost and vice president of Academic Affairs (Bonds-Raacke) and director of the Cassandra Voss Center (Korinko) of St. Norbert College in Wisconsin wrote about their on-going diversity and inclusion efforts and provided their framework for creating an inclusive campus. Below is an excerpt of the article, originally published Oct. 14, 2021 and discovered by Valerie Hayes shortly after. 

In this and future issues, we will introduce you to how other colleges and universities approach and think about diversity, equity, inclusion. 

Introduction

The need to reevaluate our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) work at St. Norbert College came into focus as systemic racism, violence and outrage led to devastated cities, communities, families and lives all around us in 2020. For some, these events were an overwhelming representation of their lived experiences while for others, headline after tragic headline revealed our collective failure to advance equitable opportunities for all people.

In response—just as many organizations and communities have done over the past year—we at St. Norbert have begun to take an honest look within and around these issues. In partnership with our newly formed Faculty and Staff Coalition of Color (FSCC), we are asking ourselves tough questions and engaging in dialogue in new ways. We’re challenging our current programs and practices and putting new cultural, strategic, operational, and educational practices in place to help redefine the future of DEIB for our students, faculty, and staff.

As we’re actively exploring these questions, it occurs to us that the answers we’re finding may be all too common in higher education. While our DEIB work at St. Norbert has progressed over the years, it hasn’t been enough: it wasn’t structured for institution-wide success, and it wasn’t creating the outcomes we had intended. We also recognize that many of our colleagues across higher education are in similar situations. It is for this reason that we chose to write this article: in sharing examples of the questions, we are considering and steps we are taking to put DEIB training into practice, we hope to be of service to other institutions that find themselves on a similar journey. 

Establishing Our Framework

Our work to redefine DEIB at St. Norbert College builds upon our founding traditions and decades of tireless work by faculty, staff and students serving as social justice advocates on our campus, many of whom are helping us carry this work forward in new and inspiring ways. We’re using a framework that includes our cultural, strategic, operational, and educational practices and considers how we need to improve each of them in the near- and long-term. The four elements of this framework must evolve and work together as a system to achieve our DEIB mission.

As the leader of Academic Affairs, I’m working to understand the concerns, aspirations, and goals of many people and groups at the college: staff, faculty, students, administrators, and board members. I’m focused on bringing people together, creating understanding and a shared lexicon, and aligning strategies and plans to address the four elements of our DEIB framework.

One of our initial challenges has been balancing the need for urgency with the need for thoughtful, integrated strategies for long-term, sustainable improvement. This balance comes from working together at the board, cabinet, division, and department levels toward common goals, and also by involving many of our colleagues to contribute to our immediate objectives.

I personally felt a great deal of urgency to engage with the FSCC and deepen my understanding of our DEIB landscape at the college. But looking back, I spent too much time discerning the situation and trying to figure out “the right way” to get started. I was worried I’d make a mistake or seem unprepared.

However, when I started reaching out to our FSCC in an authentic and empathetic way, things started coming into focus. I accepted that it was okay to be vulnerable, and--being relatively new to St. Norbert—that I’d need to rely on our FSCC members and others to guide me. I now know that I didn’t have to arrive at our first meeting with a perfect plan in hand to fix it all: it’s something we needed to accomplish and arrive at together. 

The remainder of this article is structured according to the four prongs of our DEIB framework: Cultural Practices, Strategy Practices, Educational Practices, and Operational Practices. For each one, I offer some questions for consideration and a description of what St. Norbert has put in place or is working on implementing to help achieve our DEIB goals from lessons we have learned along the way.  

 

Valerie Hayes is the chief officer for Diversity and Inclusion and serves as co-chair of the Campus Committtee on Diversity and Inclusion Excellence (CCDIE). 

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