Goal 2: Recruit, Retain, and Develop a Diverse Community of Students, Faculty, and Staff | Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Invest in Institute academic initiatives, organizations, and units designed to retain women and underrepresented student populations through degree completion.
Expand recruitment strategies and programs until the percentage of women and underrepresented communities reflects college enrollment rates for Atlanta and leverages the diversity of the national population by 2030, especially in disciplines where there is currently underrepresentation.
Expand practices such as admission waivers, stipends, scholarships, fellowships, completion grants, innovation grants, and funding programs to increase compositional diversity in awards to women, LGBTQIA, first-generation, limited/low-income, and underrepresented minority students.
Increase initiatives to broaden the scope of social innovation and entrepreneurship, experiential learning, and graduate research programs and services for historically underserved student populations.
Increase accountability and incentives for unit departments, colleges, schools, students, staff, and faculty that promote the psychological safety of students by addressing cultural (ethnic, gender, sexuality, abilities, etc.) barriers in environment, processes, and language.

Develop and instill a consistent and continual cultural narrative of how we thrive on diversity, equity, and inclusion by living our values, modeling inclusive behaviors, ensuring equity in processes, and rewarding performance to change the composition of the faculty and Institute leadership to increasingly reflect the demographic diversity of society at large.
Utilize faculty evaluation processes and criteria that reflect and support our DEI values and best practices to yield increased diversity outcomes in hiring, retention, promotion, and tenure.
Develop high-quality culturally, racially, and gender-sensitive mentoring, coaching, and sponsorship (both formal and informal) to increase diverse faculty success.
Develop a diverse faculty recruitment pipeline that includes early identification and contact, relationship-building activities, and opportunities to access faculty appointments through postdoctoral fellowships and other early-career faculty appointments.

Improve flexibility of pay policies and practices to routinely make equitable adjustments based on the Atlanta market for all staff.
Innovate in the ways we attract, develop, and retain compositional diversity of staff leadership to increase gender, racial, LGBTQIA, and abilities representation across the Institute.
Implement systemic, equitable professional development that serves the advancement and fulfillment of staff.
Develop exceptional people leaders who consistently demonstrate self-awareness, emotional intelligence, cultural competency, inclusiveness, and responsibility for a culture of inclusive innovation and excellence.

Increased compositional diversity of staff at all levels and accountability for people managers demonstrating inclusive practices.
Parity in admissions, enrollment, retention, and graduation rates by degree level and discipline for underrepresented students across a spectrum of identities by 2032.
Parity in performance outcomes for faculty and staff in career progression by 2032.
Increased engagement of historically underserved students with social innovation, entrepreneurship, experiential learning, and graduate research programs.

Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion