EIU Making Excellence Inclusive

About Making Excellence Inclusive

Primary Elements of MEI:

1. A focus on student intellectual and social development. Academically, MEI seeks to ensure that every student receives the best possible course of study for the context in which the education is offered.

2. A purposeful development and utilization of organizational resources to enhance student learning. Institutionally, MEI facilitates deep, sustained cross-sector or cross-unit collaboration and invites each member of the campus community to contribute to student learning and psycho-social development.

3. Attention to the cultural differences learners bring to educational experiences, and how that diversity can enhance the enterprise. In the classroom, campus, and beyond, MEI works to establish an environment that challenges each student to achieve academically at high levels.

4. A welcoming community that engages all of its diversity in the service of student and organizational learning. Structurally, MEI attends to both campus and community cultures.

MEI Core Principles

Diversity – Acknowledging and valuing individual differences (e.g., personality, learning styles, and life experiences) and group/social differences (e.g., race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, ability, as well as cultural, political, religious, or other affiliations).

Inclusion – The active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity—in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum, and in communities (intellectual, social, cultural, geo- graphical) with which individuals might connect—in ways that increase awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication, and empathic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and institutions.

Equity – The creation of opportunities for historically underrepresented populations to have equal access and equitable outcomes through educational programs that are capable of closing the gaps in student achievement.

Equity-mindedness – A demonstrated awareness of and willingness to address equity issues among institutional leaders and staff.

Making Excellence Inclusive By-Laws

Bylaws approved March 21, 2021 (pdf)

Making Excellence Inclusive is a signature initiative of the American Association of Colleges & Universities.