coloring outside the lines

Inclusive Excellence Retreat
For the Executive Leadership at Cal Poly
November 29 and 30, 2007

Background on Diversity Concerns at Cal Poly
The WASC Visiting Team’s Final Report in 2000 serves to summarize an important issue we face: "In view of these conditions, the need for additional effort toward diversity seems to be fairly characterized as urgent. Even students themselves expressed concern that their education was weaker than it might be as preparation for a diverse workforce because of lack of experience with diversity on campus."

Among many concerns is the CSU Board of Trustees' request for President Baker to lead the campus community in responding to campus feedback about diversity. Examples of this feedback are: comments obtained in the development of the 2007 WASC self-study proposal, the Access to Excellence plan, the report on the National Survey of Student Engagement administered at Cal Poly and the significantly lower graduation rates among some groups of students of color.

Please view a summary of campus diversity data.

Purpose of the Retreat
The Status of Women Committee, University Diversity Enhancement Council, and the Council on University Citizenship formed a planning group and designed this first of the series of retreats—the Summit Retreat. In this retreat, you will engage in seminars for two days, in which you will gain competencies for implementation of the Inclusive Excellence model in your areas. 

This model, rapidly becoming the standard for higher education, was developed by the American Association of Colleges & Universities based on a solid research foundation and on what is working at other higher education institutions.  The Inclusive Excellence model is "designed to help campuses: (a) integrate their diversity and quality efforts, (b) situate this work at the core of institutional functioning, and (c) realize the educational benefits available to students and to the institution when this integration is done well and is sustained over time" (p. iii of “Introduction to the Series” commissioned by the Making Excellence Inclusive initiative).

Through these seminars, you will gain tools for leading your areas in effective changes toward a professional and learning climate that cultivates higher levels of success for all of our Cal Poly community.

Retreat Facilitators
The retreat will be facilitated by different people on the first and second days.

The first-day facilitator will be Lee Mun Wah, Director of Stir Fry Seminars and Consulting. A nationally acclaimed lecturer and trainer, Lee Mun Wah is the Executive Director and founder of Stir Fry Seminars. He is a Chinese-American community therapist, documentary film-maker, educator, performing poet, Asian Folkteller and author.

The second-day facilitator will be Alma Clayton-Pedersen, Vice President for Education and Institutional Renewal, American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). The association’s program Making Excellence Inclusive is designed to help colleges and universities fully integrate their diversity and educational quality efforts and embed them into the core of academic mission and institutional functioning. Through this initiative, AAC&U re-envisions diversity and inclusion as a multi-layered process through which we achieve excellence in learning; research and teaching; student development; institutional functioning; local and global community engagement; workforce development; and more.

You can learn more about AAC&U’s program by reading the report entitled Making Diversity Work on Campus: A Research-Based Perspective (PDF). In particular, you are encouraged to read the Introduction to the Series (PDF).

Tentative Retreat Schedule

Location and Transportation
The bus will leave from the circle in front of the Performing Arts Center promptly at 8:15 a.m. on Thursday, November 29. PLEASE AIM TO BE THERE AT 8 A.M. Our expectation is that everyone will ride the bus except for a very small number of "special cases" (who will have notified David Conn or Cornel Morton in advance, so that we don’t worry about their absence). The bus will return to the same place no later than 5 p.m. on Friday (traffic permitting).

The retreat will be held in comfortable accommodations at El Capitan Canyon Resort, about 1 ¼ hours by road from Cal Poly. According to the resort website, "All cabins have front porches, peak ceilings, are fully equipped with standard bathroom facilities, king, queen or double beds, individual heating controls, fine linens and towels, kitchenettes with microwave, mini-fridge, wet bar sink and coffeemaker." Rooms at the resort will be assigned, and keys given out, late on Thursday afternoon.

Dress is casual (we recommend comfort over style!).