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Action and Accountability: Addressing Race and Equity Across the UW

“It is not — and could never be — the sole responsibility of one person, one office or one initiative to solve these systemic and complex issues. It will take an ongoing and sustained effort from all of us.” — President Ana Mari Cauce

Since the launch of the Race & Equity Initiative in 2015, we have taken action and made progress — efforts featured in a new provost report.

  • Last autumn, we enrolled the UW’s most diverse class of first-year students ever.
  • We launched a Diversity Blueprint that outlines UW goals, actions and accountability measures.
  • We’re holding ourselves accountable with new oversight boards for the UW Police Department and a regents committee dedicated to progress on equity and inclusion.
  • And we’ve exceeded our goals around partnering with minority- and women-owned businesses to provide goods and services to the UW, reaching 39 percent of our annual procurement budget.

While it’s important to note progress — and especially the hard work of many of you across our three campuses — it’s equally important to avoid complacency. We have a long way to go, further than any one initiative or one leader can take us.
UW colleagues, like those featured in this report (web/pdf), are leading the way in areas from recruiting and retaining a diverse faculty to transforming the curriculum to address bias to creating new tools for accountability around equity.
The president, Race & Equity Initiative co-chairs Ed Taylor and Rickey Hall, and I hope you will join us in this work — recognizing the progress made in the last few years while keeping our eyes on the horizon, taking action and holding ourselves accountable to continue working toward a more equitable and just university community.

baldasty sig
Gerald J. Baldasty
Provost & Executive Vice President
Professor, Communication
Adjunct Professor, American Ethnic Studies; Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies

 

This publication is part of a series about transformative trends and issues in higher education. These reports aim to highlight examples of people or programs working on important topics and engage the wider UW community in the discussion. We welcome you to join the conversation by emailing us your comments to edtrends@uw.edu. Many thanks to those who have shared your ideas in response to previous reports.