The University of Michigan has announced a five-year plan to make the university community more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. The university is prohibited by state law from considering race in the admissions process for undergraduate and graduate programs. This prohibition has resulted in a drop in Black student enrollments since it was enacted a decade ago.
The university has committed $85 million in new resources over the next five years to implement the initiatives in the new diversity plan, which fall into three main strategies:
- Creating an inclusive and equitable campus.
- Recruiting, retaining and developing a diverse university community.
- Supporting innovation and inclusive scholarship and teaching.
Mark Schlissel, president of the University of Michigan stated that “the future of our great university will be determined by how well we embrace the values of diversity, equity and inclusion. To live up to our full potential as a university, everyone must have the opportunity to contribute and to benefit, and our community can be complete only when all members feel welcome. Our dedication to academic excellence for the public good is inseparable from our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. We cannot be excellent without being diverse in the broadest sense of that word.”
The full plan may be downloaded here.
