Inclusive Excellence Teaching and Service Evaluation Toolkit

Inclusive Excellence is a concept developed by experts at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) as a way to re-imagine diversity and inclusion as the active process of making excellence inclusive and the responsibility of everyone. They note, “The action of making excellence inclusive requires that we uncover inequities in student (faculty and staff) success, identify effective educational (and operational) practices, and build such practices organically for sustained institutional change.”

IE changes the way the university has historically conceptualized diversity and inclusion—as a numerical goal (numbers only) of diverse faculty, staff, and students. While numbers continue to be important, under IE, the emphasis is on transforming the institution into a vibrant community that embeds diversity throughout the institution and its culture. IE employs a broad definition of diversity that includes dis/ability, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, religion, nationality, age and other important social dimensions that are part of our community.