Diversity and Community
University Prep's mission compels us to train and educate the next generation of leaders who will create impact and change in an interdependent, complex, and global community. Our students need to see, hear, and understand the diversity of people, perspectives and points of view around them and the world they will lead in the years ahead. Essential to this proposition is the ability of our students to identify, analyze, and act on issues of equity, justice, and inclusion. Our world demands it." Diversity Mission Statement, approved by the Board of Trustees on December 15, 2016
We support our Diversity Mission Statement by creating experiences for our students to come face-to-face with the issues playing out in society and allowing them the room to grow in their own identity development. From our annual Social Justice Day to classroom assignments, equity, justice, and inclusion are embedded in all that we do.
Our monthly Community Conversations in the Upper School, led by student facilitators, offer a regular forum to embrace and confront challenging issues, and the Diversity and Community Office, centrally located within the school, provides a safe space for students and faculty to have discussions or club and affinity group meetings.
Diversity Strategic Plan
In 2018, the school adopted its first diversity strategic plan, with initiatives in three areas. In program and curriculum, goals include integrating diversity and inclusion into the school curriculum, enhancing professional development in those areas, and graduating culturally competent student leaders. In recruitment and retention, the school aims to implement a plan to increase the diversity of the student body as well as the faculty and staff, and to retain them in the long term. And finally, in the area of academic performance, the goal is to reduce any disparities in academic performance in underrepresented students of color.