UW–Madison is committed to creating a community where every person feels welcome, valued, and able to succeed. We strive to provide students, faculty, staff, and the public with a university that reflects the society it serves.
Efforts to improve the climate on the UW-Madison campus are ongoing and collaborative, with many initiatives across campus. This helps us be a stronger university, able to compete with our peers, compete for research grants, and to prepare our students for living and working in a diverse and interconnected world.
The information below is intended to be a resource that will help our center become more familiar with existing initiatives, resources and workshops that will help us all work toward a more inclusive environment.
Institutional Statement of Diversity
“Diversity is a source of strength, creativity, and innovation for UW–Madison. We value the contributions of each person and respect the profound ways their identity, culture, background, experience, status, abilities, and opinion enrich the university community. We commit ourselves to the pursuit of excellence in teaching, research, outreach, and diversity as inextricably linked goals.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison fulfills its public mission by creating a welcoming and inclusive community for people from every background — people who as students, faculty, and staff serve Wisconsin and the world.”
Office for Equity and Diversity
Programs and Workshops:
- Breaking the Bias Habit: The Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI) offers a general 3-hour workshop about unconscious bias, covering race/ethnicity, gender, LGBT and disability issues to campus departments.
- Engagement, Inclusion, and Diversity (EID) Consultation and Training: Susan Tran Degrand, EID Coordinator works with campus units to foster and create an engaging, inclusive and diverse academic and work environment. She provides consultation and training, including EID assessment, EID strategic planning, EID program implementation/evaluation.
- Leadership Institute: 9-month long program where participants engage in weekly, sustained dialogue with campus colleagues to develop leadership capacities to effectively interact with members of our community across multiple social identities and build open, dynamic, and respectful working and learning environments for all. Facilitated small and large group dialogues, reflective writing, readings, and activities. (LCICE)
- Office of Talent Management, Office of Human Resources: Provides faculty and staff, including supervisors, with a wide range of resources, including professional development and leadership to cultivate individual and organizational excellence, in order to create a healthy, inclusive, engaging work environment.
- SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) Seminars: E.E.D. is a national project on inclusive curriculum coordinated by Peggy McIntosh and Emily Style. This seminar provides a unique opportunity for participants to meet in a safe and respectful environment to discuss and develop strategies for building inclusive curricula and classrooms. Using readings, videos, reflective writing and group work, we will discuss the impact of race, class, gender, age, ability, sexual orientation and other defining aspects of our identity on teaching and learning.
- Seminars, Workshops and Conferences through Learning and Talent Development:
- Thrive@ UW – Thrive @ UW-Madison provides you with important tools to help you communicate with others and gain a better understanding of yourself and your organization, including ‘Creating Inclusive Environments’, ‘Thriving in a Time of Change,’ and ‘Building & Managing Relationships.’
- Building Inclusion@UW – Building Inclusion@UW is designed to provide you organizational development around inclusion, diversity and engagement; including consultation, workshops and seminars.
- Fully Prepared to Manage – Fully Prepared to Manage provides you with specific supervisory and management skills ranging from personnel policies to interpersonal relationships.
- Fully Prepared to Lead – Fully Prepared to Lead develops your ability to positively influence people around you at any employee level.
- Conferences & Special Events – focus/topics vary depending on event, refer to website. All conferences include ‘tracks’ on inclusion, diversity and engagement relevant to the overall event focus/topic.
- Professional Development: The Division of Continuing Studies offers an array of professional development courses and workshops, including:
- Listening for a Change: Skills for Dialogue
- Mastering Facilitation for Cross-Cultural Groups and Global Teams
- Leading and Managing from the Middle
- Honoring Our Common Differences: Leadership for Inclusivity
- Our Minds at Work: Diversity in Perceptual Thinking Patterns
- The Discussion Project: The School of Education has designed this professional development series to strengthen the campus’s capacity to create a welcoming, engaging, and academically rigorous classroom environment in which students can participate in robust discussions about sometimes-difficult subjects. Participants register for a six-session series, open to faculty and staff, with sessions meeting every two to three weeks. Registration is open for the spring.
- Searching for Excellence and Diversity
- Campus Climate
- Campus Engagement and Outreach
- Diversity Connect – This initiative supports the recruitment of top diverse talent and ensures affirmative action compliance in all open positions at UW–Madison.
- Unconscious Bias Video – Hiring the Best and Brightest
- Supplemental Guidebook – Hiring the Best and Brightest