Our Mission & SEHD Goals and Priorities

Education and Well-Being for Equity — To prepare equity-minded and inclusive educational, community, family, and mental health practitioners, scholars, and leaders dedicated to eradicating inequalities and discrimination. We champion change that leads to well-being, opportunity, and life-long learning in the diverse urban, rural, and global communities that we serve.

• In using the term “equity” we mean creating a just, safe and inclusive environment as defined by the CU Denver Strategic Plan.

We will distinguish our school by fulfilling our commitments to inclusive education, collaborative research, and equitable, anti-oppressive and anti-racist practices. While recognizing the past, we strive toward a socially just and democratic world.

Our Inclusive Excellence Plan reflects our efforts to ensure that those we serve — diverse in race, ethnicity, economic resources, nationality, language, fluency, ability, geography, first-generation status, age, gender, sexual identity, veteran status, and cultural and faith practice — have access to an excellent education through inclusive practice and scholarship in a climate that is responsive to their needs. To achieve this, we practice the following principles:

• Demonstrate learning through scholarship, partnership, and leadership that thoughtfully engages with children and youth, families, schools, higher education institutions, businesses, and nonprofits with diverse perspectives and backgrounds.
• Pursue justice through continuous collective reflection and self-reflection on the ways in which diverse identities surface, intersect, and inform our shared commitments and interactions.
• Prioritize psychological, emotional, and physical safety.
• Prioritize the sense of belonging for all members of our community.
• Practice courage in our commitments to risk, reflect, and improve.

Community-engaged and global partnerships are the heartbeat of SEHD. Innovative initiatives co-constructed with school districts, community colleges, and service organizations draw upon personnel strengths in education, human well-being, and equity-centered and community-focused research. These partnerships foster and celebrate diverse community voices, relevant student learning opportunities that build careers, positive outcomes for partner institutions, multi-million-dollar grants coming into CU, and outstanding research publications cited around the world.

Goal 1: Grow our leadership and engagement activities in diverse local, state, national, and international communities to advance collaborative/partnered academic programs, research projects, and transformational policy.

• Strategy 1: Use & strengthen SEHD infrastructure and programs to support, promote, and expand engagement efforts by faculty and staff
• Strategy 2: Review and refine SEHD/university policies and practices to support increased external engagement by faculty and staff
• Strategy 3: Review and reimagine D1/D2/D3 structures including faculty and staff workloads and course distributions that support partnership initiatives
• Strategy 4: Lead partnerships to develop inclusive solutions for education and mental health challenges in diverse rural and urban communities

Goal 2: Strengthen our reputation and resources for cultivating and empowering equity-minded, collaborative, and forward-thinking professionals.

• Strategy 1: Acknowledge and reward student, faculty, staff, and alumni innovations and advancements in research, teaching, and leadership
• Strategy 2: Regularly share news, via multiple outlets, about faculty, staff, student and alumni contributions to equity-focused research, teaching, service and leadership activities across all programs and offerings
• Strategy 3: Highlight the positive impacts that donations have in the lives of our students, faculty and staff and leverage small and large ways that community members and donors may support fundraising priorities amid initiatives that ensure the effective use of public resources
• Strategy 4: Regularly engage all alumni to learn how they are impacting communities and how SEHD can provide new or revised offerings that meet key learning needs in their professional circles

Goal 3: Grow academic programs, across all modalities, that are high quality, innovative, responsive, accessible, and inclusive.

• Strategy 1: Ensure all program offerings are aligned to the SEHD Inclusive Excellence Plan and are responsive to changing social, political, and community needs
• Strategy 2: Develop specific strategies and policies for when and how we develop D1 and D2/D3 programs and courses
• Strategy 3: Support programs to identify creative growth potential based on market intelligence and feedback from key partners (superintendents, etc.)
• Strategy 4: Establish data-informed enrollment targets that are used to guide resource allocation and inform course scheduling to fully support each program
• Strategy 5: Create an integrative plan for evaluating multi-modal course/program effectiveness

Goal 4: Grow as a research and scholarship community with high impact and strong visibility across all research paradigms and creative activities

• Strategy 1: Expand opportunities and support for faculty to seek and attain external research funding
• Strategy 2: Increase resources to support faculty research activity (e.g., travel funds, matching funds for campus seed grants, a well-run office of grants and contracts)
• Strategy 3: Expand research that is responsive, partnered, and impactful with and within diverse communities throughout Colorado and the nation

Goal 5: Increase Student Retention and Success

• Strategy 1: Continue to support student leadership and engagement activities that support student health and well-being and create a sense of belonging by providing structures that build students' social capital
• Strategy 2: Continue to strengthen inclusive teaching, advising, and assessment and expand real-world and co-curricular experiences for students (e.g., para-educators, the learning agency, research, and teaching opportunities for students) to support student success
• Strategy 3: Develop strategies to engage faculty at all levels to support student success
• Strategy 4: Continue to refine and develop administrative processes and our continuous program improvement structure and practices to support student success