Vision

UAB inspiring equity and inclusive excellence, every day.

Mission

Our mission is to champion equity and inclusion and, in particular, to advocate for inclusive excellence and equity so that UAB students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community partners and friends can flourish and excel. Our mission is inspired by what we value, what we learn from research and what we teach and share with the world. It is our goal to motivate our people to take a courageous step to inspire equity and inclusive excellence throughout our state, nation, and the world, every day.

Defining Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at UAB

Diversity is a defining feature of Alabama’s and UAB’s past, present, and future; and refers to the variety of personal experiences, values, and worldviews that arise from differences of culture and circumstance. Such differences include race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, language, abilities/disabilities, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, geographic region, and more.

Equity is the guarantee of fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all students, faculty, and staff in every stage of UAB’s education and career development, while at the same time striving to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented the full participation of marginalized groups.

Inclusion is the act of creating an environment at UAB in which any individual or group can feel welcome, respected, supported, and valued. An inclusive climate embraces differences and offers respect in words and actions so that all people can fully participate in the University’s opportunities.

Building a Community at UAB that values Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

In order for our students to thrive in an increasingly diverse and complex global world, UAB must assist them in developing their abilities to communicate, understand, and work with people who are different from themselves. Building a community at UAB in which every member is welcome, supported, and valued is an essential foundation to education and learning, and therefore is central to our identity and mission. At UAB we strive to prepare our students not just to participate, but to lead, and effective leadership in the 21st century requires the skills to build productive partnerships in contexts and institutions that are increasingly diverse.

As we work to meet the goals outlined in this strategic diversity plan, UAB will continue to be a leader in preparing students for success, and UAB—through the work of its faculty, staff and students—will have a major impact on economic innovation and renewal in our state and region, and in maintaining our quality of life.

Diversity and Inclusion - continuous improvement process

We will work to develop and sustain diversity, equity, and inclusion continuous improvement process to support a campus community that is diverse, inclusive and is more than a series of education sessions or events. At UAB, our efforts will focus on ensuring that diversity, equity, and inclusion are woven throughout our DNA and is anchored in how we do our work. Creating a just and inclusive campus community is central to our planned, intentional organizing effort to ensure we have the ability and capacity to respect and welcome variety in cultures and differences and incorporate those differences into innovative research, teaching, and service practice, every day.

Through a process of continuous improvement, we are striving to lay the foundation for increasing the diversity and inclusion relational skills of the UAB community.

A process of continuous improvement will support our effort in the following ways:

• It will encourage everyone to use the same language. This is key to deploy lessons learned and best practices across academic and administrative units, processes and business practices. Formalizing documents, procedures and work instructions will make it easier to facilitate the development of a shared understanding.
• It will foster an inclusive excellence mindset. Instead of viewing continuous improvement as something to restart with every new project, a formalized and consistent approach to continuous improvement teaches our people that equity and inclusion are inherent to how UAB functions as a diverse enterprise. Foremost, diversity, equity, and inclusion is not something you add to how you work — it becomes how we work, every day.
• It makes people accountable for UAB and each other. When continuous improvement permeates throughout all levels of our enterprise, diversity stops being one person’s job and becomes part of everyone’s job. Knowing that our diversity and inclusion efforts never stop evolving will help the UAB faculty, staff, students, alumni, community friends, and partners see where they can be active participants in continuous improvement.
• It reinforces the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Today, in a higher education environment it is very easy to get lost in what is currently trending with diversity-speak, and institutional slogans. A diversity and inclusion continuous improvement process should be treated as an integral foundation for UAB and formalizing how we approach this process makes it more concrete.

Strategic Goals & Actions

The University’s Strategic Diversity Plan serves as a blueprint for the academic and administrative units’ strategic plans. The overarching strategies and actions emerged from and reflect the insight and innovation produced by Equity Advisors from those units. They are intended to support and enhance the unit plans. For that reason, they focus on areas where centrally coordinated and supported programs and initiatives will be most effective. The core campus-wide strategies will be: