Inclusiveness and Six Principles of Engagement for Excellence—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusive Practice

NACS is committed to an inclusive environment, which welcomes values and uses the unique qualities of its diverse membership to achieve common goals and encourages the incorporation of a wide variety of members’ experiences and perspectives as the organization faces the challenges of an ever-changing business environment. (12/96)

Principles of Engagement for Excellence—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusive Practice

Principle One—Understand the Value of Diversity, the Integrity of Equity, and the Benefit of Inclusive Practice

Recognize that this work is more than doing the right thing; it is also about valuing the knowledge and perspectives that people from diverse backgrounds and affiliations contribute to productively responding to the challenges faced by higher education.

Principle Two—Identify the Elements of Association Members’ Work That Can Be Leveraged to Make a Difference

Focus on offering guidance that is consistent with members’ roles as well as important and relevant to their responsibilities. Find ways to share information and 3 expertise and foster understanding. 

Principle Three—Model Inclusive Practices in all of the Association’s Work

Focus the Association’s work on demonstrating what inclusive practice looks like at the Association’s national office. 

Principle Four—Connect Cultural Competence to Performance Outcomes

Emphasize personal responsibility and accountability for diversifying the development of the student body and the workforce, understanding the role of cultural competence in high performing teams, and realizing that conflict around differences has the impact of weakening team performance. 

Principle Five—Build Association’s Capacity to Assist its Organizational Members by Offering Relevant Education and Professional Development

Teach association staff, volunteer leaders and members how to build consensus around their organization’s goals for diversity, develop partnerships, identify resources to do the work, develop leadership at all levels to implement consensus goals, and communicate the centrality of this work to the vitality of higher education. 

Principle Six—Assess Progress Toward Achieving Goals for Diversity

Foster a culture of experimentation with diversity efforts and engagement with difference, establish and use assessment results for organizational learning and develop/adopt assessment metrics for the Associations to monitor their progress over time. (11/11)