The Clinical-Community Psychology program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign values and aspires to embrace human diversity and inclusion. Diversity refers to individual and social group differences including, but not limited to, learning styles, life experiences, race, ethnicity, country of origin, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, parental status, ability and health, as well as cultural, religious, political and other affiliations. We view diversity as fundamental to the human experience, operating at all levels of the social environment (i.e., individual, organizational, institutional, system and societal). Inclusion refers to “the active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity—in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum, and in communities (intellectual, social, cultural, geographical) with which individuals might connect—in ways that increase awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication, and empathic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and institution” (American Association of Colleges and Universities). We seek to create an inclusive and diverse faculty and student body: first as a matter of fairness and dignity, second because it is vital to each of our learning and work and third because it is critical to the development of research and practice in our field.
As such, we
- seek ongoing development in our awareness of and capacity to think critically about diversity issues, recognizing that such work never ends; in part because of the dynamic nature of social identities and categories and the dynamic nature of the language and definitions we employ;
- respect that each of us is at a different place in this process;
- seek to scaffold support for all members’ continued growth;
- strive to understand how history, power and privilege shape our thinking and engagement;
- acknowledge the implicit and explicit challenges that members of minority and marginalized groups face in navigating academic settings that historically were designed without them in mind;
- seek to recognize, label and challenge dominant narratives, social norms and structures that underlie intentional and unintentional harms or bias, including educational policies and practices;
- believe that thoughtful and critical engagement with diversity is necessary to achieve competence in any of the core domains of professional activity in clinical community psychology (ethics, research, teaching, assessment, intervention, supervision, consultation);
- embrace our own individual responsibility for engaging diversity in each of these domains;
- work to restore or put right the unavoidable conflicts and harms that occur among members of our diverse program;
- approach engagement in a spirit of humility, empathy, openness to inquiry, honest dialogue and self-reflection.