At NIU, academic excellence and innovation are the essence of our work. In this context, we recognize diversity as a dimension of excellence and driver of innovation.
We want diverse experiences, perspectives and backgrounds to enrich the intellectual life of our university community, and we understand that achieving this will require us to challenge long-held assumptions and traditional structures.
To this end, across NIU, there is strong interest in rethinking, reframing and reconstructing our undergraduate and graduate curricula to make them more relevant, more inclusive, more interdisciplinary and more integrated with each other. This work will advance our vision of promoting personal professional and intellectual growth, and transforming the world through research, artistry, teaching and outreach.
Curriculum Enhancement and Innovation
Reviewing University Human Diversity Requirement
IL Public Act 87-581 requires institutions of higher learning in the state of Illinois to address human diversity during a student’s education. At NIU, undergraduate students must complete the human diversity baccalaureate requirement through a designated human diversity course or non-course experience. The catalog language and course offerings were last updated in 2018. The Committee for Academic Equity and Inclusive Excellence recommended in 2020 that the catalog entry, course offerings and enrollment trends be reviewed and updated.
In February 2022, Provost Ingram approved the memorandum sent to deans, department chairs, directors, and program coordinators with the request that they review and update the Human Diversity courses offered in their departments. Courses taught by faculty who retired were removed and new courses were added. The Committee for Academic Equity and Inclusive Excellence recommended that the Human Diversity course offerings be reviewed periodically to ensure courses are current.
Examining Curricula through an Anti-racist Lens
Faculty Senate
Curricular change is at the purview of the faculty, and the NIU Faculty Senate is engaging in this work, with the formation of the Faculty Senate Social Justice Committee in fall 2020.
Colleges and Academic Departments
Colleges and departments are identifying and dismantling curricular bias through formation of departmental and college committees.
College of Business
- COB Student Success: The college graduate and undergraduate curriculum committees formed a task force to review the curricula examining how they have a positive impact on society, including the areas of DEI. These task forces will make recommendations on course-level and program-level changes to be approved in fall 2021. In support of their work, four to six faculty members attended the AACSB Global Diversity and Inclusion Summit in December 2020.
- The COB delivered and approved its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Action Recommendations report in December 2021. It established the following objective related to Academic Excellence:
- Infuse DEI concepts throughout the Undergraduate and Graduate curriculum.
Action items that were identified to support that objective were as follows:
- Establish focal courses within each department for DEI values.
- Integrate course readings, lectures, and cases to thoughtfully reflect on the power of diversity.
- Invite coaches, judges, guest speakers and alumni panels in classes from a diverse pool of participants so that all our students can see role models that look like them.
- The Department of Finance has targeted gateway STEM-oriented courses with a demonstrated academic equity gap and provided tutoring support.
- College Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM). This college committee is using data to inform and implement best practices and tactics to support and promote increased retention rates of students of color, enhanced persistence rates toward degree completion, increased enrollments and the decrease of course equity gaps.
- Addressing academic equity gaps in key gateway courses. Courses with high D/F/W rates among students of color have been identified. Local action plans, such as course redesign, are being created and implemented to reduce or eliminate academic equity gaps.
- Examining and changing the evaluation of student dispositions in teacher preparation programs. The process by which students are evaluated will be examined from a perspective of equity, inclusion and multiculturalism to identify areas of improvement, prevent bias and provide support for students.
- Conducting a curricular review to ensure that social justice and equity are addressed in all degree programs. College curriculum committee is identifying course and degree program content that addresses issues of social justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. Areas of curricular improvement and action steps are to be identified and implemented.
- Develop and implement co-curricular experiences focusing on equity and diversity.
- Educate U.S.: Undergraduate students participate in an innovative set of diverse experiences teaching and learning in Houston, Texas, Public Schools or at the Mandaree, North Dakota, Bureau of Indian Affairs School.
- Educate Global: Diversity experiences for undergraduate students who engage in teaching-related experiences in China, Taiwan, Finland, Spain, Ukraine and Indonesia.
- Engage Global: Diversity experiences for undergraduate and graduate students in Sri Lanka and Belize.
The CEET College Curriculum Committee worked collaboratively with its department and programs to articulate a set of recommendations in order to improve equity for historically underrepresented students. Rooted in a data driven framework, recommendations focus on gateway courses with high drop/fail/withdrawal rates to identify areas of improvement for preventing bias and providing support for historically underrepresented students to increase their academic engagement and sense of belonging.
In recent years, the committee has explored ways to create an effective learning environment that better serves all students. CEET faculty are participating in DEI-related workshops provided by NIU Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL). These efforts have resulted in one out of five CEET faculty receiving Distinguished Teaching Scholars (ACUE) designation, enabling them to incorporate modules designed to address core competencies related to DEI in their courses.
CEET College works closely with the program leaders to further increase faculty participation in DEI-related workshops and ACUE program. Utilizing data analytic framework, CEET will engage actively with underrepresented professional student organizations to explore ways how to further improve student success rates and retention in gateway courses.
- The College of Health and Human Sciences is engaged in reviewing the methods used in addressing diverse topics in specific courses. Further, they are integrating programmed blocks of instruction about DEI topics.
- Military Sciences conducts instruction on the Military Equity Opportunity Program, which is a part of the curriculum that relates to ethical decision-making and organizational effectiveness. The program is an effort to ensure fair treatment of all persons based solely on merit, performance and potential.
- The College of Law has a Faculty Diversity and Equity Task Force. The task force is currently an advisory committee to the dean and faculty on diversity, equity and inclusion matters, which include curricular matters.
- In spring 2021, the College of Law created the new position, assistant dean of strategic communications, alumni engagement and diversity initiatives. The position helps to lead diversity and equity initiatives for the College of Law.
- In fall 2020, the College of Law created its own Racial and Social Justice website and the Law Library’s Racial and Social Justice library guide, which presents resources available to the NIU community and the public at large to help foster a legal profession dedicated to upholding racial justice.
- In fall 2020, the College of Law created its Race and Law Conversations Series to engage in much-needed conversations on a wide range of racial and social justice issues. Conversations have addressed police accountability and reform, voting rights and election law, and environmental justice.
- The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is conducting departmental level evaluations of undergraduate, graduate and general education curriculum from an anti-racist perspective and evaluating anti-racist best practices for disciplines.
One example of the work in progress can be seen in the English Department, which has created a website for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Anti-racism (IDEA) work. Although not all departments have created websites, there are other examples as well. For instance, there is a group of faculty in geosciences participating in the national URGE (unlearning racism in the geosciences) program.
- Ad Hoc Diversity Committee
This academic year, the dean appointed an Ad Hoc Diversity Committee to take a look at two broad questions:
- What is the college doing right that makes a positive contribution to the college’s anti-racism agenda?
- What things should the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences be doing that we are not doing?
- The College of Visual and Performing Arts departments, including the School of Art and Design, School of Music and School of Theatre and Dance, are utilizing new or existing committees to perform comprehensive evaluations of their curriculum to examine bias.
- The School of Music is engaging in the following curricular activities through:
- Taking several pronged approaches.
- Curricular review.
- Best practices to guide conversations.
- Key is to make sure to involve students – they must be included in the conversations.
The University Libraries have compiled extensive lists of anti-racism and social justice resources.
Removing Barriers that Inhibit Transdisciplinary Scholarship
Transdisciplinary scholarship is defined as inquiry or artistic work that cuts across disciplines, synthesizing and integrating disparate disciplinary methodologies to shed light on a research question or to create new knowledge or artistic works. Such work transcends disciplinary methodologies to inspire creative approaches to difficult research questions. Many scholars, especially BIPOC scholars, contribute to the body of transdisciplinary scholarship. Increasingly, academe has recognized not only that addressing the complex questions we face as a state, nation and world necessitates a transdisciplinary approach, but also that the formal hierarchies and metrics used to assess and assign value to scholarship devalue this type of work and contribute to the marginalization of BIPOC faculty.
This work scheduled for AY21-23 will:
- Develop a definition and understanding of interdisciplinary scholarship that supports NIU’s mission, vision and values, and is relevant to NIU faculty, especially BIPOC faculty.
- Review relevant literature on the characteristics of and barriers to interdisciplinarity and examine best practices at other institutions.
- Create recommendations on how to lower those barriers and to pursue NIU policies and procedures that support and enable transdisciplinary research, and thereby enhance the recruitment, advancement and retention of innovative faculty scholars, especially BIPOC faculty.
Goal 3A
Strengthening the Graduate Student Experience
Graduate programs at Northern Illinois University contribute to instruction, scholarship and engagement. Some programs contribute directly to the research and artistry mission, while others provide our region the next generation of educators, thought leaders and entrepreneurs. Many of our graduate programs contribute to the diversity and inclusion mission of the university.
The work scheduled for AY21-23 will both improve and strengthen the graduate experience, with an emphasis on the environment for BIPOC and international graduate students. Efforts will involve developing a common understanding of the desired experience for NIU’s diverse and international graduate students, evaluating our programs in light of that understanding, and making recommendations for moving toward the desired experience.
Goal 3B