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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Our Commitment to Belonging

When the Â鶹ÊÓƵ launched its mission to weave the philosophies and practices of inclusive excellence across the campus, we at CMCI immediately asked ourselves some critical questions: What does it mean to define academic excellence through inclusion? How does our community—our leadership, faculty, staff, and faculty—redefine our work so that we begin and end, always, with a frame of diversity, equity and inclusion? What are our commitments to ourselves and each other? While there are no simple answers nor perfect paths, we know that our task is to build a college culture of belonging, to create a space in which all of us, regardless of position, place, or politics, can thrive. 

To belong, we maintain in CMCI, is to be able to enter a place, familiar or unfamiliar, and have a space. In CMCI, we will know that we have a space of belonging when all of our voices are heard, when all of our bodies are good fits and when all of our ideas and intellects are valued. 

The implications of this vision for graduate studies are considerable. In CMCI, graduate students and graduate studies are critical to who we are and what we do. Each of the various graduate programs across the college work constantly to bring diverse voices, perspectives and populations together, aiming always for intellectual community that is as responsive to a politics of justice as it to a disciplinary curriculum. 

Graduate students in CMCI study in one or more of our seven academic units:

• Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design (MA, MS, PhD)
• Communication (MA, PhD)
• Critical Media Practices (MFA, PhD)
• Information Science (BAM, PhD)
• Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance (PhD)
• Journalism (MA, MS, PhD)
• Media Studies (MA, PhD)

Engaged in scholarship and creative work, graduate students across the college work independently and collaboratively, engaging with peers and faculty within their units, across the college and with the campus. 

Together, we bridge our disciplinary interests with our broader commitments to anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion. Whether coming together in social/intellectual community around diversity, in activist/anti-racist ways, or as scholars and teachers invested in inclusive pedagogies, the faculty and students who comprise the graduate community in CMCI invest in an intersectional anti-racism and the college and academic units work together to build a graduate population that reflects the diversity of our nation.