Educational excellence is the main aim for any academic institution. However, achieving excellence in education is not a straight pathway. Thus, it calls for adoption of strategies or techniques to help achieve the desired results. One of the core techniques that institutions have chosen to embrace is the excellence inclusion. This is a result oriented strategy. It has also dawned to administrations of institutions that diversity is a core element for excellence in education.
Inclusive excellence is a planning process that aims at assisting institutions to establish a comprehensive and well-organized set of systemic actions that aim at ensuring massive diversity, inclusion, equity and accountability at every point of campus life. The main premise of inclusive excellence dictates that universities and colleges need to deliberately integrate their efforts of diversity into the main aspects of their institutions. These aspects include leadership, quality improvement programs, academic priorities, decision making, organizational cultures as well as daily operations (Association of American College and Universities, 2009). All these aspects are aimed at maximizing success in these institutions.
Inclusive excellence prepares a platform for organizing work in an institution in an intentional, deliberate and well coordinated approach. This approach applies a twofold focus in efforts of diversity. This aims at concentrating on increasing compositional diversity as well as developing environments in which all backgrounds students can survive. The approach also requires a more comprehensive level of involvement and commitment that ensures that all students fulfill their educational potential. The approach also places the diversity mission at the middle of the life of the institution so as to make it a core organizing principle around which decisions of the institution are made. The approach also dictates for close attentiveness to the student experience itself, which includes the impact of race, ethnicity, and influence of physical ability, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic background (Bart, 2012). The approach also dictates that the ideals of diversity and excellence be conducted as the interdependent and interconnected goals are.
In several dimensions, Inclusive excellence is a representation of the next core step in the evolution of a system developed in creating diverse learning environments that are core to the growth of students, their learning, as well as achievement. This process needs be integrative, multidimensional, and student centered to ensure that it develops the kind of individuals that the society has been seeking. The Inclusive Excellence process is the one that encourages people to continue in their diversification efforts though with massive intentionality and attentiveness of how they address the needs of students in various institutions. Supported by a clearly defined body of empirical research like to the institutional contexts, practices, and cultures that play a massive role in the establishment of a diverse environment of learning Inclusive Excellence is a representation of a shift, not in the manner in which these institutions work but on how we approach and conduct the system (University of Denver, 2012) In general, Inclusive Excellence assists people to enthusiastically manage diversity as a significant and core asset of cloistered life and not as a peripheral problem.
Excellence and diversity are closely intertwined. In its different dimensions and manifestations, diversity is a core prerequisite for excellence. It is fundamental for attaining and discerning the best in the future. There are several reasons why diversity is a core in ensuring success in most institutions.
One of the main significances of diversity in educational excellence is encouragement for creativity and innovation in education as well as other sector of life. Diversity prepares people on how to handle different situations in life. In the academic life, students are usually exposed to challenges, which at some points interfere with their educational performance. It is at this point that these students need be creative as well as innovative so as to adopt new ways of taking them to the normal performance (Clayton and Musil, 2006). In most cases, this is achieved through intentional diversity that will dictate new techniques of conducting their studies to mark excellence in certain areas where they had challenges.
Diversity is also beneficial in the sense that it embraces new forms of excellence as well as diverse ways to measure excellence. With diversity in an institution, it becomes easy for a student to conduct research as well as engage into informed learning. This is the case because students get engaged into new and more reliable research methods, which may have been introduced by interacting with people of different visions and abilities. Institutions may diversify by engaging into collaborative efforts with other institutions, which may have better stands in terms of research and academic administration (Saunders & Kardia, 2009). This will equip the institutions with the new methods of conducting their activities and make them yield massive benefits, which will dictate academic excellence for students.
Diversity will also dictate excellence in the administration of institutions. This will only work if the management of the institutions considers the significance of infusing diversity to recruiting, admissions and practices. The institutions should come up with different methods of hiring its employees as they would play an extremely vital role in ensuring outstanding performance. While admitting students, the institution should ensure that people of different traits are admitted who will stand for excellence and opening for opportunities (Campbel, 2012). There should also be different sets of allowed practices within an institution that will make anyone within the environment comfortable. All these may only be achieved through diversity in institutions to encourage excellence.
Academic excellence is influenced by different forces thus coining the term excellence inclusive. Institutions have to adopt different measures to assist in high performance. Administrations have to diversify their operations by adopting new hiring, techniques for employees and tutors, proper admission techniques that will embrace diversity and diversifying the structures of the company. Educational excellence and diversity are inseparable.
References
Association of American College and Universities, (2009, April 23). AAC&U | Making Excellence Inclusive. Association of American Colleges and Universities. Retrieved January 18, 2013, from http://www.aacu.org/compass/inclusive_excellence.cfm
Bart, M. (2012, February 24). Strategies for Creating a More Inclusive Classroom | Faculty Focus. Effective Teaching Strategies for the College Classroom | Faculty Focus. Retrieved January 18, 2013, from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/strategies-for-creating-a-more-inclusive-classroom/
Campbel, K. (2012, October 14). Diversity & Democracy | Volume 15, Number 1 Making Excellence Inclusive: Higher Education's LGBTQ Contexts. DiversityWeb - A Resource Hub for Higher Education. Retrieved January 18, 2013, from http://www.diversityweb.org/DiversityDemocracy/vol15no1/about_issue.cfm
Clayton- Pedersen, A.R. and Musil, C. M. (2006). A Framework for Making Excellence Inclusive from http://www.aacu.org/inclusive_excellence/documents/MEIPaperLastRevised12308.pdf
Saunders, S., & Kardia, D. (2009). Creating Inclusive College Classrooms | CRLT. CRLT | Center for Research on Learning and Teaching. Retrieved January 18, 2013, from http://www.crlt.umich.edu/gsis/P3_1.php
