Dear UMBC Community,

We are pleased to share the 2020-2021 Inclusion Council Reports and Recommendations with our community. These recommendations are the group's suggestions of how the university can more fully realize our value of inclusive excellence. They represent more than a year of effort from ten working groups made up of more than 150 students, faculty, staff, and alumni. We are deeply grateful for the diverse, thoughtful, and action-focused perspectives they brought to this process.

To respond to this report, and to help us understand our next best steps, we have created an Implementation Team that is modeled on our Retriever Courage work. The team will be chaired by Dr. Carole McCann, Professor and Chair, Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies; and Beatriz Gutierrez-Malagon, Coordinator for Leadership, Campus Life. The charge of this team is to create a plan of work, timelines for identified projects, and partnership teams. The Implementation Team includes representatives from the Inclusion Council, Shared Governance leaders, and subject matter experts. We will provide you with regular updates on their progress.  

We know that the work of the Inclusion Council and the Office of Equity and Inclusion does nothappen in isolation. Rather, it both relies on and is indebted to the decades of work that many in our community have already done and continue to do. As a result of your hard work—your scholarship on diversity and inclusion, your support of marginalized students, your commitment to developing equitable processes—UMBC is nationally known as a leader in the work of inclusive excellence. Yet we also know that just as success is never final, the work of justice is never done. We appreciate your continued support.  

If you have questions about this report or the plan to move forward, please reach out to us at oei@umbc.edu.

In partnership,

President Freeman Hrabowski

Provost Philip Rous

Candace Dodson-Reed ’96, Chief of Staff to the President and Executive Director, Office of Equity and Inclusion 

Keith J Bowman, Inclusion Council Co-Chair and Dean, College of Engineering and Information Technology

Carole McCann, Implementation Team Co-Chair and Professor and Chair, Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies

Beatriz Gutierrez-Malagon, Implementation Team Co-Chair and Coordinator for Leadership, Campus Life