Training and Professional Development for DU Community Members
Impact Area: Invest in and provide training for students, staff, and faculty
View the DEI Action Plan for 2020-2021
Institute baseline, mandatory training and continued professional development for administration, faculty, staff, and students.
Action Item Details
The University of Denver has the opportunity to be known for giving all of its members the skills to engage in diversity, equity, and inclusion work. The development of these skills is central to improving our culture. During the 2020-2021 academic year, we will continue to grow trainings and professional development tailored to the unique needs and perspectives of the DU community. They include:
- Chancellor’s Cabinet, deans and associate deans: All leadership will complete the FIIT inclusive teaching practices training modules.
- Faculty: All existing and incoming DU faculty, including adjuncts, are required to complete the Everfi modules on harassment, diversity, equity, and inclusion and implicit bias. Launching in fall 2020, DU faculty are also required to take the inclusive teaching practices training modules through the DU-created Faculty Institute for Inclusive Teaching (FIIT). There will also be opportunities for further professional development offered regularly through FIIT throughout the winter and spring quarters.
- Grow the Office of Teaching and Learning’s ability to center DU as the premier institution in the United States in the creation, delivery, and assessment of inclusive pedagogy.
- Administrators and staff: All existing and incoming administrators and staff are required to complete the Everfi modules on harassment, diversity, equity, and inclusion and implicit bias. Explore other training to further grow competencies in diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- Students: All incoming undergraduate students are required to complete the Everfi module on diversity, equity, and inclusion, including introducing concepts of identity, stereotypes, bias, power, privilege, oppression, microaggressions, allyship, and more. Students are also required to complete this module as part of their Discoveries Orientation experience. Resident Assistants (RAs) and Discoveries Leaders (DLs) will also complete this module. Going forward, DU could open this up to all undergraduate and graduate students this year.
Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)
Explore a framework for the implementation of the IDI, the only theory-based assessment of intercultural competence that allows individuals and leaders in organizations to see a personal, as well as institutional, progression and growth. The IDI will give DU the ability to create a professional and personal development baseline and development plan for staff and faculty.
Updates
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Announcing the Faculty Institute for Inclusive Teaching
August 5, 2020
"Dear colleagues,
Over the years, the University of Denver community has come together with a collective vision. We wanted to redouble our commitment to inclusivity, to strengthen DU as a place where students, from all backgrounds, can receive a world-class education and find a deep sense of belonging."
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DU Commits to Equitable Classroom Culture With New Faculty Institute for Inclusive Teaching
August 12, 2020
"The University of Denver announced new further commitments to advancing equity in all classrooms, in every discipline, across campus. The new Faculty Institute for Inclusive Teaching (FIIT) and related initiatives will ensure that every DU faculty member—whether building on years of inclusive teaching awareness, or just beginning to incorporate inclusive teaching into their curricula—will gain new tools and skills to make learning more accessible to the university’s diverse student population."
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Moving the Needle Through Inclusive Teaching
August 13, 2020
"When classes begin next month on the University of Denver campus, it will mark the beginning of a quarter unlike any the institution has previously experienced. Social distancing and masks will be required; classes will be a hybrid of in-person and online; and everyone will likely have experienced a summer of debate about racial justice and inequality. For Valentina Iturbe-LaGrave, this rapidly shifting reality is changing the way she interacts with faculty across the university."