Infusing Domestic and Global Perspectives into Your DEI Initiatives

Creating and maintaining an inclusive and welcoming environment for everyone on a campus is necessary to recruit and retain diverse faculty, students, and staff, as well as to create an environment that promotes Global Citizenship to reflect an increasingly global society. Yet at most institutions, DEI initiatives only focus on domestic diversity and lack a global perspective. By not incorporating global diversity into larger DEI work, we risk short-sighted DEI initiatives and alienating different forms of diversity, including international faculty, students, and staff.

We know that research points to an enhanced focus on Global DEI as increasing inclusivity and feelings of belongingness by fostering a welcoming environment for all. This effort, overwhelmingly resulting in positive effects, can only be possible if all faculty, staff, and students (international and domestic) are continuously trained in terms of intercultural competencies. In this training, we’ll therefore focus on how to infuse Global DEI into your overall DEI strategy. We’ll frame how doing so will help you to leverage multicultural perspectives, provide a voice to international and multicultural populations, foster cross-cultural interaction, and provide intercultural education and engagement opportunities.