What does it mean to create education that transforms, to build connections that endure and to support communities that flourish?
And how do we pursue these ideals? Our new Strategic Diversity Plan lays out our common goals and objectives and expresses our approach to the concept of inclusive excellence.

“A majority of one” is how Joseph Vaughn ’68, Furman’s first Black undergraduate student, described his experience, which led to the university’s desegregation. In April, with the unveiling of a statue of Vaughn, we further refined our self-image by making clear who we are and what we value.

Community members gathered virtually and on campus to celebrate and reflect on Vaughn’s legacy, the power of the statue –which welcomes all to campus the way Vaughn the man once did –and the completion of the plaza bearing his name. This latest evolution of the campus landscape is among the recommendations of Furman’s Task Force on Slavery and Justice, which was formed in the spring of 2017 with the support of the president and provost.

That decision and the ensuing “Seeking Abraham” report brought to life Furman’s principles as an institution, which embody the ideals of liberal arts and sciences, including a high regard for human value, reflection, innovation and relentless accuracy. Students, faculty, staff and alumni from across academic departments and experiences contributed to the report. In a less visible but still deeply held commitment to recognizing the past and present harms of racism, we created a university holiday for Juneteenth after U.S. President Joe Biden signed legislation making it a federal holiday.

Students take a study break across from the Furman Bell Tower.

After five years of pursuing an open-rank strategy for faculty hires, the fall 2021 class of new faculty is the most diverse in Furman’s history. This representation matters because students, faculty and staff should see themselves reflected in the faculty, and students of diverse backgrounds should have a community of mentors who model academic leadership but also embody the full range of lived experiences, backgrounds and identities that exist in our society.

What else can be done to create an institution steeped in the culture of belonging? The Faculty Development Center plays a powerful role.

• As a part of the “Summer 2020 Vision” series for online and hybrid learning, the center held course-and research-redesign planning modules to facilitate supportive, accessible learning communities across online, hybrid and in-person formats. Partnering with the university’s IT department, the center provided teaching demonstrations to help faculty maximize new classroom technology during the pandemic.

The purpose of it all? To ensure that no matter how students participated, where they joined from, or what constraints they may have had, they were included and supported as a part of a learning community set up for their success.

• The Faculty Development Center also offered programming focused on inclusive pedagogy and dialogue across interpersonal differences. Workshops dealt with building inclusive and anti-racist syllabi and helped individual departments review their curriculum and courses to ensure equitable access and learning outcomes.
• The center also designed a new initiative called Talking Teaching, aligned with the book,“Bandwidth Recovery,” focused on recovering the cognitive resources that underrepresented students lose to poverty, racism and social marginalization.
• The center partnered with five peer institutions to receive a CREATE grant (Conversation-Rich Education for Anti-Racist Teaching/Learning Environments) from the Associated Colleges of the South to launch a peer-to-peer conversation initiative among faculty and staff about race, diversity, equity and inclusion.

In all, the goal of these efforts is to help facilitate transformative learning experiences where diverse individuals can come together to develop a shared sense of belonging and purpose.