Dear AU community,

One of many reasons American University is a special place where changemakers thrive is our ongoing pursuit of our values. The things we as Eagles care deeply about are part of our daily work, thinking, and engagement. Among those core values is inclusive excellence, the belief and understanding that we as a community cannot be truly excellent without being inclusive. As we pursue this critical work throughout our community and as we begin our new semester, I want to update you on some of our inclusive excellence work and compliance with the Supreme Court decision on race-conscious admissions in higher education.

As we are implementing the court’s ruling and advancing our IE goals, we have taken a number of steps. We thoroughly reviewed our admissions processes and policies during the summer. New training is being developed for our teams who review undergraduate, graduate, and WCL applications. Updated recruitment and conversion strategies to engage diverse applicants in new ways throughout the process are underway. We included a statement about the university’s inclusive excellence values and an optional new question on the undergraduate application to help prospective students understand its importance to our community and provide them an opportunity to discuss their perspectives. We are reviewing possible essay prompts for the graduate application, and WCL added an optional essay inviting applicants to discuss how their lives have been shaped by aspects of their identities. Importantly, as we comply with the law in our admissions processes and decision-making, we continue our focus on recruiting, admitting, and enrolling diverse classes of undergraduate, graduate, and law students.

Following the court’s decision, other admissions-related topics arose, such as the role of alumni or family connections to a university during admissions (sometimes referred to as legacy admissions). AU does not give preference to legacy status in admissions. We ask about family connections on the undergraduate application because our Office of Alumni Relations has a scholarship that can be awarded to admitted undergraduate students with a parent or grandparent who obtained a degree from AU.

To continue the community dialogue on these important issues, we will hold an educational event on September 26 from 2:30-3:30 p.m. in Butler Board Room. Campus experts including WCL dean Roger Fairfax, WCL professor Lia Epperson and executive director Sara Kaplan of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center will provide their insights and analysis of the Supreme Court decision and the path forward.

The court’s decision has made the admissions aspect of our work more challenging and affected our pursuit of belonging and inclusion for members of community. Thus, our already important inclusive excellence work and engagement across the community takes on even greater significance. We are broadening and deepening the work, including moving forward on the search for the new vice president of inclusive excellence, increasing equity-based fundraising by 17-fold since the start of the Change Can’t Wait campaign, continuing our inclusive hiring practices, engaging our new students, and continuing affinity-based programming.

Additional recent inclusive excellence progress includes working with our newest Eagles and furthering our growth in diverse hiring. During Eagle Summit, 36 trained AU faculty, staff, and alumni led approximately 1,400 incoming undergraduate students in 61 small group dialogues to explore diversity and inclusion topics. Thanks in part to the continued work to train faculty hiring committee chairs about inclusive practices, we are welcoming in AY 23-24 another diverse class of new faculty, continuing an ongoing trend. As of this August, 48 percent of new tenure line faculty and 41 percent of new term faculty identify as faculty of color. 39 percent of incoming tenure line faculty and 57 percent of term faculty identify as female.

Thanks to the dedication of our community, our inclusive excellence journey moves forward each day. We have much more work ahead, and I am looking forward to our continued efforts together in pursuit of our shared values.

With Rosh Hashanah beginning tonight, Shanah Tovah to all those who celebrate.

Sincerely,

Sylvia