Diversity Leaders are faculty and staff members who have successfully completed either the pedagogy series, curriculum workshop, or have been part of a peer coaching team. Leaders undertake either nine or 12-month projects in collaboration with 3-4 student Inclusion Fellows. Diversity Leaders and Inclusion Fellows may conduct research together on such topics as how social identities affect students’ sense of belonging on campus, the effects of inclusive programming on retention, and working to better understand asymmetries in student experiences at Beloit. Alternately, they may form action teams that work, for example, with Beloit’s First-Year Initiatives program to devise faculty development projects around inclusive pedagogies and advising, serve as a reciprocal mentor/teaching assistants that assist in infusing more inclusive approaches to teaching and co-curricular activities, or develop, in collaboration with the Enrollment Management staff, a program that promotes inclusivity in the college’s admissions efforts. The leadership teams will work together with the project Co-PIs to provide cross-fertilization of ideas.

Each cohort of fellow teams (three in year one and six in years two and three) will meet in a monthly (more often during summer) seminar with faculty and staff leaders and led by a Co-PI. The seminar will conjoin their project with broader reflection on how to promote integrated, intentional approaches to diversity and inclusion, both individually and institutionally. Teams’ research will inform the continuing work of the Inclusive Leadership Project (e.g., becoming part of the material discussed by reading groups) and also be shared with the President and senior staff so that the findings may inform the college’s wider activities and plans. Research and action work will be collected in the “ideas bank” that acts as a resource for students and faculty interested in diversity and inclusion projects, research results, and promising practices.