• Loyola's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion homepage 
• Loyola’s Anti-Racism Initiative 
• Institute for Racial Justice 
• Student Diversity and Multicultural Affairs 
• Bias reporting
• DACA student resource search tool
• Gender neutral bathrooms at Loyola
• Student Accessibility Center 

Inclusive excellence statement

Working toward inclusive excellence includes building intrapersonal and interpersonal awareness, engaging in curriculum transformation, teaching with an inclusive pedagogy, and building inclusive learning environments. We recognize that our community is strengthened by the diversity of our students, faculty, and staff along the social dimensions of race, color, religion, biological sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, disability, marital status, parental status, military/veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are especially committed to helping our nation create a culture of health, promote health equity to reduce health disparities, and improve the health and well-being of all, especially for those groups who experience the health system disparately due to systemic oppressions.

This policy should be included in the following documents. The policy can also be included in other MNSON documents (e.g., syllabi) if desired.

• Student handbook
• Job postings
• MNSON website
• Strategic Plan
• MNSON Sharepoint

Chosen name and pronouns statement

Class rosters and university data systems are provided to instructors with only students’ legal names presented. Knowing that not all students use their legal names or identify with a gender that aligns with their sex assigned at birth, faculty members/I will use the name and/or personal pronouns you use. If you choose, you may email the faculty member/me directly to share your information. Additionally, if these change at any point during the semester, please let the faculty member/me know. For more information on how to change your name in LOCUS, please visit the Preferred Name Policy here.

This policy should be included in the following documents. The policy can also be included in other MNSON documents (e.g., syllabi) if desired.

• Student handbook

MNSON-Related Resources and Documents

Click the title to view 

Thank you to the Jesuits West Collaborative Organizing for Racial Justice for aggregating many of these resources.

The School of Nursing's Inclusive Excellence Task Force has defined several important terms to establish a shared lexicon for faculty, staff, and students. Important to understanding these terms is that they all must be understood together and in relationship with each other.

Diversity

Defined broadly, diversity refers to the vast array of salient, socially constructed, and value-laden identities across humankind, inclusive of but not limited to age, citizenship, class, color, disability, gender identity and expression, national origin, race, religion, and sexual identity. More specifically, diversity refers to historically oppressed and marginalized groups who because of oppressive social systems are underrepresented in U.S. higher education.  

Inclusion

Inclusion refers to how institutional practices, policies, and habits transform to include diverse people and perspectives, especially those from historically oppressed groups. The ongoing and adaptive practice of inclusion impacts campus culture and climate.

Equity

The process of modifying practices that have intentionally disadvantaged a particular group so that all people in that group have an equal opportunity to thrive, succeed, and reach their goals. The process is ongoing, requiring us to recognize that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and adjust to imbalances arising from oppressive social systems. 

Intersectionality

The interconnected nature of social systems inclusive of but not limited to ageism, xenophobia, classism, colorism, ableism, heteronormativity, racism, religious oppression, and transantagonism. These systems create overlapping and interdependent systems of oppression that help explain the complexity of human experiences.

Equality

Every individual has the same opportunity to make the most of their lives and talents. Equality is the distribution of the same resources and opportunities to every individual across a population. Equality aims to promote  fairness and must be paired with equitable practices. To have equal systems, all people should be treated fairly, unhampered by stereotypes, biases, or prejudices. 

Social Justice

Social justice entails identifying and contesting social policy and processes in which power and privilege  create inequitable outcomes for marginalized groups that inhibit their democratic empowerment, health equity, health access, and civil and human rights. When injustices occur, the aim is to identify solutions to remove systemic barriers and create equitable access and opportunities for all.

Antiracism

Ongoing actions against racial hatred, bias, systemic racism, and the oppression of historically oppressed and minoritized groups. Anti-racist work institutionalizes policy and programs that address racism. 

Microaggression

The everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership. 

Implicit Bias

Attitudes, beliefs, prejudices, and stereotypes that are activated without awareness or intentional control that may impact our understanding, actions, or decisions.  

Civility

Civility is treating one another with respect and inherent dignity of human worth through our words and actions. Civility does not mean that we will agree on everything or that our disagreements can hide behind “niceness”; rather civility includes listening, acknowledging, valuing, and collaborating without degrading someone else in the process. 

Systemic Racism

Any embedded policies, laws, practices, and social and cultural norms that perpetuate and sanction racial inequities against people of color.

Discrimination

The unfair and unjustifiable treatment of individuals or groups based on (but not limited to) their race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, social class, physical ability or attributes, religious or ethical values system, national origin, and political beliefs.

• The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity
• AACN Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion homepage
• AACN Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Bibliography
• AACN Latest Data on Diversity
• National Organization for Nurses with Disabilities: 2017 Sharing our Stories, Hear our Voices
• NIH Strategic Plan to Advance Research on the Health and Well-being of Sexual and Gender Minorities
• Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People

Asian/Asian American and Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian

• A Critical Review of the Model Minority Myth in Selected Literature on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Higher Education | Review of Educational Research
• Asian Americans, affirmative action, and the political economy of racism: A multidimensional model of raceclass frames | Harvard Educational Review

Whiteness

• A phenomenology of whiteness | Feminist theory
• Desiring Diversity and Backlash: White Property Rights in Higher Education | The Urban Review
• Separate and unequal: How higher education reinforces the intergenerational reproduction of white racial privilege
• The impact of whiteness on the education of nurses | Journal of Professional Nursing
• The possessive investment in Whiteness
• The white/Black hierarchy institutionalized white supremacy in nursing and nursing leadership in the United States | Journal of Professional Nursing
• White immunity: Working through some of the pedagogical pitfalls of “privilege" | Journal Committed to Social Change on Race and Ethnicity
• White institutional presence: The impact of Whiteness on campus climate |Harvard Educational Review
• White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack
• Whitened rainbows: How white college students protect whiteness through diversity discourses | Race Ethnicity and Education
• Whiteness and difference in nursing | Nursing Philosophy
• Whiteness as property | Harvard law review
• Whiteness in Higher Education: The Invisible Missing Link in Diversity and Racial Analyses: ASHE Higher Education Report, Volume 42, Number 6

Settler Colonialism and Decolonization

• A third university is possible | University of Minnesota Press
• Decolonization is not a metaphor | Decolonization: Indigeneity, education & society
• Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native | Journal of Genocide Research

Diversity in Academic Nursing Education

• Advancing diversity in academic nursing | Journal of Professional Nursing
• Advancing diversity through inclusive excellence in nursing education | Journal of Professional Nursing

Native American, American Indian, Indigenous, First Peoples

• An indigenous peoples' history of the United States
• Beyond Access: Indigenizing Programs for Native American Student Success | Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC.
• Beyond the asterisk: Understanding Native students in higher education | Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLL.

Racism and Anti-Racism

• Anti-racism in nursing education: Recommendation for racial justice praxis | Educational Innovations
• Anti-racist change: A conceptual framework for educational institutions to take systemic action | Teachers College Record
• Conceptualizing color-evasiveness: Using dis/ability critical race theory to expand a color-blind racial ideology in education and society | Race Ethnicity and Education
• Disrupting Postsecondary Prose Toward a Critical Race Theory of Higher Education | Urban Education
• Developing racial justice allies in an online graduate workshop centering Latinx students | Innovative Higher Education
• Ebony & ivy: Race, slavery, and the troubled history of America's universities | Bloomsbury Press
• Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color | Stanford law review
• Multiracial in a monoracial world: Student stories of racial dissolution on the colorblind campus | About Campus
• Plantation politics and neoliberal racism in higher education: A framework for reconstructing anti-racist institutions | Teachers College Record
• Race, Structural Violence, and the Neoliberal University: The Challenges of Inhabitation | Critical Sociology
• Toward a critical race curriculum | Equity and Excellence in Education
• Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth | Race, Ethnicity, and Education

2SLGBTQA+

• Developmental pathways to trans inclusion on college campuses | Washington, DC: ACPA-College Student Educators International
• ‘It’s a hard line to walk’: Black non-binary trans* collegians’ perspectives on passing, realness, and trans*-normativity | International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
• Making campuses more inclusive of transgender students | Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education

Diversity

• Diversity and higher education: Theory and impact on educational outcomes | Harvard educational review
• Dynamic diversity toward a contextual understanding of critical mass | Educational Researcher
• Equity and inclusion in practice: Administrative responsibility for fostering undocumented students’ learning | About Campus
• Readings for Diversity and Social Justice (4th Ed.)

Classroom Inclusion

• From safe spaces to brave spaces: A new way to frame dialogue around diversity and social justice | The Art of Effective Facilitation: Reflections from Social Justice Educators
• Holistic admissions: Could you be biased? | Journal of Nursing Education
• Holistic admissions in nursing: we can do this | Journal of Professional Nursing
• Holistic admissions in undergraduate nursing: One school’s journal and lessons learned | Journal of Professional Nursing
• The neoliberal and neoracist potentialities of international doctoral student of color admissions in graduate education programs | Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education

Admissions and Holistic Admissions 

• Holistic admissions: Could you be biased? | Journal of Nursing Education
• Holistic admissions in nursing: we can do this | Journal of Professional Nursing
• Holistic admissions in undergraduate nursing: One school’s journal and lessons learned | Journal of Professional Nursing
• The neoliberal and neoracist potentialities of international doctoral student of color admissions in graduate education programs | Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education

Undocumented, DACA Students

• “I just can’t stand being like this anymore”: Dilemmas, stressors, and motivators for undocumented Mexican women in higher education | Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice
• Institutional response as non-performative: What university communications (don’t) say about movements toward justice | Review of Higher Education

Social Justice Action

• Indigenous Action Media (2014) | Accomplices not allies
• Note to educators: Hope required when growing roses in concrete | Harvard Educational Review
• The next American revolution: Sustainable activism for the twenty-first century
• The perception of progress: Conceptualizing institutional response to student protests and activism | The NEA Higher Education Journal

Disability and Ableism

• It’s Not Just About Racism, But Ableism | Diverse Issues in Higher Education
• Learning race in a U.S. context: An emergent framework on the perceptions of race among foreign-born students of color | Journal of Diversity in Higher Education

International Students 

• Learning race in a U.S. context: An emergent framework on the perceptions of race among foreign-born students of color | Journal of Diversity in Higher Education

At Loyola Nursing, we seek to create an environment characterized by openness, fairness, and equal access for all students, staff, and faculty. A welcoming and inclusive campus climate is grounded in mutual respect, nurtured by dialogue, evidenced by a pattern of civil interaction, and is one of the foundations of our educational model. Creating and maintaining a community environment that respects individual needs, abilities, and potential is critically important.

During the 2022 Spring semester, Loyola Nursing will undertake a vital and relevant climate assessment. This is our chance to make a difference in Loyola Nursing’s future, our opportunity to make positive, lasting changes and to help create a more inclusive campus. To ensure full transparency and to provide a more complete perspective, we have contracted with Rankin & Associates Consulting, LLC, to help lead this effort. Rankin & Associates Consulting, LLC, has conducted over 200 campus climate assessment projects over the last 20 years.

Read more about the assessment here.

Dian Squire, PhD

Founding Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence