On the second day of the virtual Campus Prevention Network Summit, hosted by EVERFI, conversations focused on diversity, equity and inclusion on campuses as well as the mental health of Black women students.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inequities in higher education, especially as most colleges moved online. Turns out, many low-income students lack access to high-speed internet, computers and other technological resources needed to attend online classes and complete course work online.
Jesse Bridges, senior vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion at EVERFI, said colleges should use this moment to look toward the future through an equitable lens, especially given some institutions plan to continue partially online even in the fall.
Bridges also said colleges must put in place an inclusive excellence framework to “redesign the campus experience to be one that is safe, healthy and supportive of all students.”
She said the inclusive excellence framework was established as a way to help institutions “integrate their diversity and quality efforts, situate this work at the core of institutional functioning and realize the educational benefits available to students and to the institution when this integration is done well and is sustained over time.”
The four main areas of inclusive excellence, according to Bridges, are access and equality; curricular and co-curricular lens diversity; student learning; and development and climate.
“Creating forms of discussion and decision making where voices are genuinely heard, respected and novel ideas are taken into consideration” is important, she said. “Intentionality in the planning and design process is key.”