Vision and Mission

 

Vision

To transform higher education structures, policies and practices in ways that build equitable, just, and inclusive communities and proactively support healthy and successful students, faculty, and staff in the College and throughout the communities we work alongside.


Mission and Goals

From our multi- and interdisciplinary academic genealogies and epistemological foundations rooted in who we are as people, educators, colleagues, and co-creators and disseminators of knowledge, we intentionally strive to:
  1. Identify, engage in, and advocate for decolonial* approaches to teaching and pedagogy, scholarship and creative activity, and service.
  2. Create possibilities for equity-minded,** anti-oppressive, social justice-oriented, and decolonizing spaces within and through our university.
  3. Examine, enhance, and transform every space in H&SS from face-to-face and virtual classrooms, offices, and meetings to institutional assumptions, policies, processes, and actions, with an eye towards justice, equity, and transformation.
  4. Employ and support creative and scholarly research activities that critically and continually reflect and act toward justice, equity and transformation.
  5. Act consciously to identify and counter harmful uses of power and privilege toward any individuals or groups that can result from hierarchical structures and categories of people as organized throughout CSU Fullerton.


Objectives/Priorities to actualize H&SS CoJET Mission and Goals

  1. Identify, engage in, and establish a repository for best practices and recommendations that actively support the recruitment and retention of diverse, equity-minded faculty, staff, and students.
  2. Identify, engage in, and establish a repository for diversifying pedagogies, curriculum, and praxis to support the creation of inclusive classrooms and offices for the success and well-being of students, faculty, and staff.
  3. Identify structural inequities in resource allocation and distribution, including workload equity, curricular and hiring imbalances, throughout the College and address these strategically through the lens of our College values and via engaged, collegial governance.
  4. Establish a safe avenue of communication for structurally vulnerable and diverse faculty and staff to voice their concerns.
  5. Identify ways to highlight and reward H&SS students, staff, and faculty engaged in justice, equity and transformation work and scholarly and creative activities.
  6. Identify, create, and promote opportunities for communication, networking, and mentorship for diverse and marginalized faculty, staff, and students within H&SS and across the university.
  7. Represent the College (on a case-by-case basis) to collaborate with university colleagues to examine, identify, and address inequitable disparities in workload, resource allocation, and evaluation/reward structures that impact faculty and staff.


Definitions

*Decolonial: Within the context of a minority-serving institution, a decolonial approach advocates for "the empowerment and liberation of racially minoritized students," (Garcia, 2018, p. 133). A step towards the decolonial also means using the land in a way that serves the communities from which it has been stolen. Finally, it includes undoing the coloniality in all of its manifestations, including that of power, knowledge, being and gender.

**Equity-minded: According to the USC Center for Urban Education, to be equity-minded is to "describe actions that demonstrate individuals' capacity to recognize and address racialized structures, policies, and practices that produce and sustain racial inequities (Bensimon & Malcom, 2012; Dowd & Bensimon, 2015). List of Equity Minded IndicatorsPDF File .

 

References

Bensimon, E.M & Malcolm, (2012). Confronting equity issues on campus: Implementing the
equity scorecard in theory and practice. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.
Dowd, A.C. & Bensimon, E.M. (2015). Engaging the "race question": Equity in U.S. higher
education. New York: Teachers College Press.
Garcia, G.A. (2018). Decolonizing Hispanic-serving institutions: A framework for organizing.
Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 17(2), 132-147.