CEHHS Vision and Mission Statements/AE Definitions
Our vision is a culture where knowledge, education, health, and social justice are key contributors to promote quality of life for all.
Our mission is to develop, encourage, and prepare faculty, staff, and students who influence, improve, and inspire a healthy, educated, socially just, and vibrant society.
Definition and Commitment to Access and Engagement Terms
Definition:
Access refers to the meaningful capacity of each individual to personally engage in the full breadth of resources, experiences, and opportunities offered by an institution or community.
Commitment:
The CEHHS community will endeavor to enhance access by actively embracing diversity, democratizing social institutions, correcting historic and systemic inequalities, supporting inclusion, communicating transparently, demystifying the “hidden curriculum,” and bridging information, understanding, and privilege gaps.
Definition:
Climate is the current, dynamic environment of an institution or community with regard to welcoming diversity, supporting inclusion and sense of belonging, and enabling access, as perceived by an individual or as generally understood by a broader constituency.
Commitment:
The CEHHS community will create a healthy and productive climate that is perceived and experienced as welcoming, diverse, supportive, and enabling of growth and sense of belonging.
Definition:
Culture can have two distinct meanings in the realm of diversity:
- The customs, beliefs, social structures, norms, interactions and achievements of a particular racial, ethnic, geographic, religious, social, or other group.
- The unwritten, dynamic rules and traditions, customs, expectations, assumptions, beliefs, and habits that represent the norm for the people in an organization (such as a university) or group.
Commitment:
The CEHHS community will actively embrace and respect and honor multiculturalism. The CEHHS community will transform a culture that advances diversity, demands equity, promotes inclusion, and champions access and success for all. This includes active resistance of systemic oppressions.
Definition:
Diversity refers to the range of human characteristics and socially constructed identities (typically, as reflected in a group of people), potentially including but not limited to: age, body size, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, intellectual or political perspective, language, life experience, national origin, physical or cognitive ability, race, religious belief, relationship or family status, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and other intersecting identities.
Commitment:
The CEHHS community will purposefully and exuberantly acknowledge, reflect, embrace, and honor the rich diversity of our community, region, state, nation, and world in our workplace and learning environment. As a community, we will work to address inactions and actions that dismiss, exclude, or otherwise violate our commitment to honor the rich diversity of our community, region, state, and world in our workplace and learning environments.
Definition:
Equity means that each person has a meaningful opportunity to succeed and flourish, and has access to the resources, experiences, and support systems they individually need to prepare for a productive and fulfilling present and future. Equity requires that structures and policies are fair and just, and that resources are provided more intentionally to those who have been historically and are currently underserved.
Commitment:
The CEHHS community will ensure that every member has an equitable opportunity to succeed and flourish, and will have access to the resources, experiences, and support systems that they individually need to make that opportunity fair, just, and meaningful. The CEHHS community will actively pursue social justice as a means to dismantle systems of disparity and to actualize equity.
Definition:
Inclusion is the intentional, open embrace of diversity by a community, so that each individual feels not only included but accepted, connected, understood, supported, and valued. True inclusion acknowledges and works to dismantle systems of discrimination and oppression by dominant social groups.
Commitment:
The CEHHS community will actively embrace diversity and work to ensure (through both policies and actions) that each individual member of our community, and all those we come in contact, will feel included, welcomed, connected, supported, and valued.
Definition:
Social Justice is the aspiration where all persons enjoy equal rights, influential voice, authentic participation, meaningful access to resources, fundamental respect, comprehensive safety, and equitable opportunities.
Commitment:
The CEHHS community will embrace social justice as both an urgent endeavor and an indispensable outcome. We will conscientiously work to shape our university, our institutions, and our society to fairly and persistently meet the needs of all persons who have been historically underrepresented or oppressed.