Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

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An artistic community is enriched by diversity and inclusion. As teachers, we encourage artistic and intellectual freedom by fostering environments that value diverse students, colleagues, and collaborators, providing a respectful and challenging space in which to address different ways of life, cultures, values, and ideas. By "diversity," we mean that we embrace differences in gender expression and identity, age, culture, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, physical ability, learning style, religion, spiritual practices, vision, occupation, nationality, immigration status, socio-economic status as well as the many ways of being and life experience that span these differences. Promoting such a broadly inclusive understanding of diversity requires ongoing reflection, education, and effort to ensure support, understanding, and awareness. As such, we proactively educate ourselves on anti-racism, decolonization practices, and suppressed histories and travel regularly internationally to spaces where we are invited, experiencing diverse perspectives, and learning cultural/social cues to become welcome guests, create sensitive intercultural exchange, and long lasting friendships across borders.