UC San Diego’s first campuswide plan for diversity will leverage the collective genius of faculty, staff and students. Photos by Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego Publications

Shaping the Future of Diversity and Inclusion at UC San Diego

On our campus, diversity can refer to many things: race and ethnicity; gender and sexual orientation; backgrounds and lived experiences; abilities and disabilities.

The UC San Diego Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) supports campus efforts to become a more equitable, inclusive community where all feel welcome, supported and able to thrive. In fall 2017, the office plans to involve the entire campus—faculty, staff and students—in developing the first campus-wide Strategic Plan for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. The plan will guide UC San Diego in its desire to be a campus that reflects and serves all segments of society, and whose policies and practices serve as a model for inclusive excellence. Integrated communications efforts will help inform, engage and encourage the campus community to participate in the plan.

Through the leadership of EDI Vice Chancellor Becky Petitt, the EDI Advisory Council—a group of 24 student, staff, faculty and alumni representatives that advises the Chancellor—has been laying the groundwork for the strategic plan over the past academic year. Moving forward, the new EDI Assistant Vice Chancellor, Diane Forbes Berthoud, will assist in directing the plan’s development and acquiring and incorporating campus input into the final draft.

Diane Forbes Berthoud is the new assistant vice chancellor in the Office for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

Joining EDI on May 8, 2017, Forbes Berthoud’s responsibilities involve strategic planning, advancing institutional effectiveness, serving as liaison to Human Resources and leading diversity-focused community engagement and campus-wide initiatives. As a member of Vice Chancellor Petitt’s leadership team, she will represent the VC-EDI on high-level task forces, advisory groups and systemwide work groups. Forbes Berthoud has more than 22 years of experience in higher education, nonprofit and government. She brings a proven record of success in organizational communication and development, strategic planning and assessment of EDI initiatives. She most recently served as director of practicum at Sixth College, where she spearheaded the development, design and assessment of multiple community-based initiatives and courses. Forbes Berthoud has planned and implemented several regional conferences hosted at UC San Diego that convened hundreds of participants to dialogue about high impact practices, diversity in education and social justice.

Prior to UC San Diego, Forbes Berthoud was an associate professor and department chair of communication at Trinity University, a visiting professor at George Mason University, and a senior fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park in leadership and public policy. She has been awarded faculty fellowships in the areas of women’s leadership, community-based research, public policy and dialogue from Georgetown University, the Washington Area Women’s Foundation and the Interactivity Foundation. She holds a master’s degree and a doctorate in organizational communication and social psychology from Howard University.

“We are pleased that Diane Forbes Berthoud will help lead the charge to build UC San Diego’s first campuswide plan for diversity,” said Petitt. “However, to be successful, we need support and participation from the entire campus community. The best plan will leverage the collective genius of our faculty, staff and students.”

Campus community members will be able to participate in the development of the diversity plan in a variety of ways:

• Launch
  The initiative will launch in fall 2017 with a campus meeting featuring a video created for this effort. VC Petitt will share why it is critical that everyone’s voice is heard, and how we can all be involved, in the strategic plan.
• IdeaWave
  IdeaWave is a crowdsourcing platform that features targeted campaigns related to areas of strategic importance to UC San Diego. IdeaWave is one way that campus community members can participate and provide the Office for EDI a wider range of input.
• Concept Teams
  In-person concept teams will help develop and refine feedback proposed through the IdeaWave platform.
• Small Focus Groups
  The Office for EDI, in partnership with the Office for Strategic Initiatives, will also conduct small focus groups to discuss opinions and ideas about the Strategic Plan, with data collected in a manner that allows for integration into the IdeaWave analysis.

The Office for EDI is actively identifying advocates and influencers who will play a key role in the success of the plan process: directors and student interns at campus resource centers, Leaders for Equity Advancement and Diversity (LEAD) Fellows, faculty equity advisors and others. These individuals will help spread the word, moderate the IdeaWave campaign, and evaluate ideas and feedback received through the various engagement processes.

Petitt added, “The success of our Strategic Plan for Diversity depends on our faculty, staff and students. We can all help shape the future of diversity and inclusion at UC San Diego.”