DEI 2022-2023 priorities

The Ford School spent the 2022-23 academic year evaluating and learning from our first five-year strategic plan (2016-2022) while keeping our momentum going and this important work moving forward.  In collaboration with student leaders, the DEI Coalition, faculty, staff, and alumni, we identified 6 key priorities that we focused on during this interim period. Together, the Ford School community is cultivating a rich learning environment, fostering innovation, and creating a culture of belonging rooted in justice.

Key Priorities

1. Diversify our faculty and staff: We seek to attract and retain a demographically and intellectually diverse faculty, and support all faculty in countering implicit biases. We are implementing new approaches to attract and retain diverse staff.

2. Diversify our student body: We are working to recruit students from underrepresented backgrounds, enhance support services to help all students succeed, and equip all students with the ability to understand DEI issues as it relates to analyzing, making, and implementing policy.

3. Integrate anti-racism into our curriculum and co-curricular activities: Provide guidance and training to faculty and staff to address issues related to racism and institutional discrimination; encourage new ways to integrate DEI content into courses; and offer courses and programming that explicitly address structural racism in public policy.

4. Support research and policy engagement that pursues just, equitable, and inclusive public policy for diverse populations: Foster new research and policy engagement, enhance and promote DEI values in public policy discourse, and connect faculty research and policy engagement related to DEI to our educational programs.

5. Create engagement opportunities that advance social justice: Provide financial and logistical support to pursue research projects, policy and community engagement opportunities, and learning experiences that advance social justice.

6. Bolster DEI communications: Amplify events, research, insights, and opportunities that advance DEI within and beyond the Ford School and the University of Michigan, and elevate DEI values in public policy discourse.