Marquette.edu // Beyond Boundaries: The Strategic Plan //

A Culture of Inclusion

Theme Leader

Dr. Christine (Chris) Navia
Vice President for Inclusive Excellence

Goal Statement

Foster a diverse teaching and learning environment and a culture that values, respects, welcomes and promotes a sense of belonging for members of our campus and our community.

Theme objective 1 of 0

Attract, retain and graduate a diverse and inclusive community of students.

Tactics

In consultation with recruitment partners, ensure a diverse set of prospects is developed and managed via the customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Engage underrepresented student populations in disciplines with historically lower participation rates through pedagogies such as high-impact educational experiences.

Build on academic success models that have been demonstrated to enhance student engagement, persistence and graduation.

Theme objective 2 of 0

Attract and retain a diverse and inclusive community of faculty and staff committed to our mission.

Tactics

Broaden applicant pools by requiring a diversity component in all hiring plans.

Utilize equitable hiring practices when hiring faculty and staff in academic and nonacademic programs and units.

Ensure all hiring units are provided with information regarding strategies for diverse hiring practices and for hiring faculty and staff “for the common good.”

Conduct an annual assessment of our human resources across all academic and nonacademic programs and units.

Develop and implement a competitive and just compensation package, a merit system that is tied to performance, and a system for addressing salary compression and other market inequities.

Foster a culture of inclusion and diversity among university leadership that ensures a commitment to mission and a diverse learning environment.

Develop and implement a leadership institute that provides faculty and staff assuming managerial and administrative assignments with the knowledge, skills and attitudes for effective leadership.

Theme objective 3 of 0

Enhance opportunities for diverse and inclusive learning and scholarship.

Tactics

Map diversity across the curriculum to identify areas of strength and areas for improvement.

Develop strategies to increase cluster hiring capacity to facilitate the strategic development of diverse and inclusive learning and scholarship.

Theme objective 4 of 0

Foster a community culture that values, respects, welcomes, and promotes a sense of belonging.

Tactics

Engage all members of the campus community in dialogue with one another on topics that promote a community culture that values, respects and promotes a sense of belonging.

Provide opportunities and encourage all members of the campus community to further develop their cultural, multicultural and intercultural competencies.

Encourage growth of student chapters of professional organizations, particularly those focused on underrepresented student populations that enhance student engagement, student success and student-professional networking.

Theme objective 5 of 0

Engage diverse communities beyond the boundaries of our campus.

Tactics

Through community groups, such as the Near West Side Partners (NWSP), and other initiatives, such as Promoting Assets and Reducing Crime (PARC), strengthen partnerships that enhance our neighborhoods and communities.

Achieving Beyond Boundaries

Metrics

Associated with this theme are several key metrics, which help us assess our progress in achieving the goal and understand how we compare to other universities. For each metric, Marquette’s value is shown over time including, if available, a comparison to a referent group of 22 universities comprising both peer and aspirational schools. As the university is launching a new strategic planning effort, these metrics will no longer be updated. A new peer/aspirant group was developed by the Beyond Boundaries Steering Committee in 2022. The metrics below still reference the old referent group and will not be updated with the new peer/aspirant group.

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Progress Points

The university implemented the Ready to Inspire Success program (RISE), a pre-orientation program designed for students of color. The goal of the program seeks to support and connect students of color while equipping them with the tools to be successful throughout their four years at Marquette.
To bolster Marquette’s Race and Ethnic Studies program (RAES), the university recruited nine faculty members based on shared interdisciplinary research interests. Cluster hiring also helped advance faculty diversity, which increased from 13 to 33 percent since 2016.
Marquette launched a series of training initiatives, including an “Unlearning Racism” series, designed to address implicit bias among staff and faculty.
Through a $5 million endowment from the Thomas J. Rolfs Family Foundation, Marquette launched the Institute for Women’s Leadership, which seeks to advance gender inequality research and create programming and training opportunities for women in leadership, both on campus and in the community.
The College of Nursing awarded more than $800,000 in scholarships to underrepresented students and held more than 800 one-on-one meetings with students through Project BEYOND-2, a program that supports students from underrepresented backgrounds in their pursuit to graduate and start their nursing careers.
For the first time in the Law School’s more than century-long history, there were as many women in the first-year class as there were men—with women making up 52.4 percent.