University Planning

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

Cultivate and nurture a welcoming and inclusive campus where students, faculty, and staff have an equitable opportunity to thrive.

Goals and Accomplishments

Recognize that historically underserved students have not had equal access or opportunity for educational success

  • Launched a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Professional Development Initiative to help build capacity for equity-mindedness among faculty and staff.

  • Launched the cross-divisional Advancing Equity Project to expand and coordinate campus efforts to address equity gaps in student academic outcomes.

  • Equipped faculty to address equity gaps in course outcomes through a new Faculty Grades and Equity Gaps Dashboard with associated resources, and through greatly expanded programming in inclusive and anti-racist pedagogy through the Office of Faculty Development and other venues.

  • Published new General Education Dashboards on the IR Fact Book site to support and facilitate a nuanced understanding of critical first-year outcomes for historically underserved students through disaggregated demographic data.

  • Three cohorts of blended Academic Affairs and Students Affairs personnel have completed CSU-sponsored  Student Success Analytics Certificate Program, by three cohorts of blended Academic Affairs and Students Affairs personnel. Each is focused on a particular area of inquiry relative to student success. 


Maximize the recruitment, retention, support, and graduation of diverse students

  • Successfully implemented the new Chico State University Ethnic Studies requirement, which students can fulfill through one of 19 courses available at the lower- and upper-division levels. 

  • Invested in five new tenure-track positions in Multicultural and Gender Studies (MCGS) and one joint tenure-track position in MCGS and the School of Education.

  • Implemented retention and equity plans across all academic colleges to meet specified targets for improving the year-one-to-year-two retention rate of majors and closing retention equity gaps by 2025.

  • University Communications and Latinx Equity and Success (LEQS) assembled a team of experienced outreach and Spanish-bilingual practitioners from offices across campus to produce a strategic marketing campaign to engage and recruit Spanish-language families.                      

  • Launched new Student Orientation and Transition Programs to increase the number of Spanish-language parent and guest program days.                     

Eliminate achievement gaps by providing excellence in education and support to all students

  • Deployed Graduation Initiative 2025 funds (in summer 2022 and 2023) to provide opportunities for eligible students to retake critical first-year courses. Over 130 students successfully completed these courses, helping them reset their academic trajectories.

  • Began implementation in 2022­–23 of revisions to the General Education (GE) program reflected in EM 21-023. This includes a five-year review of all GE courses that require faculty and chairs to assess courses for inclusive and anti-racist pedagogies.

  • Utilized Graduation Initiative 2025 funds to support a Critical Success Course program in 2022–23, in which all faculty who teach CHEM 111, POLS 155, and HIST 130—three high equity gap courses—are rethinking course design and delivery with a focus on student engagement, belonging, and equity.

  • Provided semester-long course-specific faculty learning communities for faculty in the Departments of History and Philosophy in spring 2022 to support better understanding of equity gaps and improvement of course outcomes in HIST 130 and PHIL 102 (also high DFW/high equity gap courses).

  • Successfully proposed and launched a pilot project to the new Global HSI Equity Innovation Hub at CSU Northridge, which supports second-year Latinx students and other underrepresented students in STEM majors who are on academic notice. The project employs a peer coaching model for target students to bolster their STEM identity, efficient transition out of academic notice, and retention on campus and in a STEM field of study.

Promote hiring and retention that contribute to a diverse and inclusive community that reflects student demographics

  • Hired Max Cordeiro in fall 2022 as the inaugural Human Resources EDI Recruitment and Retention Specialist to advance our goal of increasing workforce diversity. Initial efforts will include a major revision of the Avoiding Bias in Hiring training, development of a “Equity Advocate” training(s) for inclusion on search committees, and growing relationships with minority-serving institutions to increase recruitment pipelines. 

  • The University’s EDI commitment is positioned at the top of all position vacancy announcements.

  • Dispersed a $29,000 CSU Chancellor’s Office grant to fund the @RealRTP: Navigating the Academy as a Diverse Teacher-Scholar (PDF) learning community in 2020–21.

  • Allocated a portion of the CSU Chancellor’s Office grant to each of the seven Faculty and Staff Associations to engage in diverse faculty recruitment and retention efforts.

  • Funded and developed a Hub for Research in Equity, Antiracism, Diversity and Inclusion during the 2021–22 academic year. READI engages in the production of new and innovative scholarship on EDI and serves as a hub for pairing faculty needs with resources on EDI and antiracism.


Develop and enhance policies, programs, and activities that support an inclusive, accessible, and equitable learning and working environment

  • Institutionalized the University Diversity Council (UDC) through EM 21-024, establishing it as a permanent committee to provide the University with expertise critical to accomplishing its equity, diversity and inclusion goals.

  • Moved the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion to the Office of the President (from the division of Student Affairs) while the interim and acting Chief Diversity Officers (CDO) began reporting directly to the President.

  • Hired a Chief Diversity Officer who sits as a member of Cabinet.

  • Developed and implemented equity-minded Academic Advising Programs focused on campuswide Student Learning Outcomes for first-year advising as part of the Advancing Equity Project.

  • Implemented means-based orientation fee reductions and fee waivers in Orientation and New Student Programs. Orientation will now include prominent EDI programming in each session.

  • Latinx Equity and Success hosted a six-session HSI Professional Initiative for
    faculty and staff in 202223.Working in collaboration with Faculty Development,
    this program featured current research and explored HSI serving frameworks and
    assessment methods, showing opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to
    support current campus HSI initiatives.

Honor the distinct values, beliefs, identities, and cultures of our students, faculty, staff, and community

  • Implemented a new Black Peer Mentor program in 2021, co-facilitated by Academic and Student Affairs personnel. Supported by GI 2025 and a Student Learning Fee award, the program served 93 students in 2021–22.

  • Successfully secured and administered over $18 million in Hispanic Serving Institution grants that advance service to and opportunities for Latinx and low-income students.

  • The HSI Alianza collaborative is advancing cooperation among and institutionalization of our multiple current grant activities:

  • Renamed Sutter Hall to Éstom Jámani Hall, which reflects the Northwestern Maidu’s traditional name for the Middle Mountains, the small mountain range in the valley south of Chico.

Address real-world issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion through interdisciplinary and international experiences

  • Named by the US Department of State to the prestigious list of National Higher-Education Fulbright HSI Leaders.

  • Recognized again as one of the nations’ top study abroad programs.

  • Cross-divisional team participation in the 2022–23 CSU Student Success Network Middle Leadership Academy with the campus goal of identifying critical acts of translation—literal and figurative—to support our Latinx students and their families in the transition to college.

  • Launched a campuswide restorative justice initiative based in student rights and responsibilities.

Cultivate an environment that embraces diversity of thought, freedom of expression, and respect for others

  • Replaced “Academic Probation” language with “Academic Notice” in all University communications—removing problematic associations with criminality that can further inhibit a sense of belonging, especially for underrepresented students.

    • In alignment with the CSU Chancellor’s Office Equity Priority 1, Enrollment Management launched re-engagement and re-enrollment campaigns to reach disenrolled URM student populations.                                                                                                                 
  • Released a nationwide Request for Qualification soliciting proposals for a piece of public artwork that reflects equity, diversity, and inclusion; The selected project will be prominently placed on the east wall of Meriam Library.
Team Co-Leads

Joseph Morales
Chief Diversity Officer, Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Kate McCarthy
Dean of Undergraduate Education
kmccarthy@csuchico.edu

Kaitlyn Baumgartner Lee
Assistant Vice President for University Advisement
kbaumgartner@csuchico.edu

Yvette Zúñiga
Associate Director, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
yzuniga@csuchico.edu