Director’s Letter

Liz Cole, Director

Welcome to the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID)! The NCID was founded in 2005 following the historic US Supreme Court Cases of Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger which challenged U-M's affirmative action policies in admissions. Following these decisions, U-M leadership believed that our efforts to diversify needed to expand to a national audience in order to ensure that institutions of higher education would provide access to students of all backgrounds, and that teaching and scholarship about the benefits, challenges, and opportunities of diversity would be supported and sustained. At its inception, the NCID was charged to form strategic networks and relationships; create and support initiatives that advance diversity, equity, and inclusion; and advance means of support for diverse faculty, staff, and students.

We continue that mission today through a variety of vibrant programs that connect, catalyze, and elevate diversity scholars and scholarship by building communities for information sharing and collaboration, mobilizing scholars for social transformation, and promoting the application of this scholarship to address pressing societal issues.

For example, the NCID is home to the Anti-Racism Collaborative, which offers small grants, research support, and opportunities for networking to scholars across U-M whose work helps us to identify, understand, and challenge systemic racism in all its forms. Beyond U-M, our Diversity Scholars Network fosters academic, educational, and social connections among over 1300 researchers from more than 500 institutions worldwide to amplify the impact of their work, and offers programming to facilitate their professional success.

The NCID is proud to be the administrative home of the Collegiate Fellowship program in U-M’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA). This program recruits extraordinary scholars, as judged by their departments, whose research, teaching, and service contribute to diversity and equal opportunity in higher education, and prepares them for faculty roles. The fellows are exceptionally diverse in their respective research, scholarship, and identities. The NCID supports them through community-building activities, professional development and mentoring, and support for their teaching and research.

One of the NCID’s key values is democratizing access, and the team of the CASCaDE Project (Change Agents Shaping Campus Diversity and Equity) are making good on this commitment by developing an open-access online toolkit of resources for faculty and staff in higher education who aspire to make change on their campus to improve outcomes for underrepresented minority students. Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CASCaDE aims to inspire, support, and elevate the next generation of leaders who will shape a more inclusive and equitable higher education landscape for all.

On our own campuses, the Inclusive History Project (IHP) joined the NCID in 2022, realizing our longstanding ambition to meaningfully support research in the humanities. The IHP is a U-M presidential initiative designed to study and document a comprehensive history of the University of Michigan that is attentive to diversity, equity, and inclusion and stretches across the University’s three campuses, as well as Michigan Medicine. In this journey of institutional self-discovery, U-M commits to changing our conception of the past and to taking action to build a truly inclusive present and future. The IHP engages the campuses and the communities that surround them through programming, supporting teaching about U-M’s histories, and offering opportunities for students and community members to participate in historical research.

Finally, the NCID offers a webinar series organized around timely and consequential themes that address the challenges and opportunities presented by diversity. These panel discussions include nationally recognized scholars and policy experts and draw audiences from around the country. In 2023-24, our theme, “Doing DEI Now,” explores how we can continue to work effectively for inclusive climates and conduct scholarship and teaching about diversity in the current, rapidly changing political and social context. Separate sessions addressed DEI and free speech, how universities can support the safety of diversity scholars who face threats and harassment, and the relationship between DEI and excellence.

This new website marks an important transition for the NCID. In the summer of 2023 we returned to the Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (ODEI) in a meaningful homecoming. This strategic move aims to fortify the collaborative efforts of both the NCID and ODEI, enhancing our ability to create a more equitable and inclusive society, both at U-M and in the world beyond it.

Thank you for stopping by. Please explore our site, and join our mailing list to receive updates and notifications for future events and opportunities. If you have questions or ideas for programs or collaborations with NCID, please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected].

Wishing you the best,

Liz Cole
Director
University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies