Diversity at UChicago
“Diversity” refers to idea that individuals belong to or are shaped by a wide range of identities and statuses, including race, ability, class, and gender, among others. In the educational context, identities and statuses shape how students engage with university culture, each other, and new concepts and frameworks. When educators and learners embrace diversity as a pedagogical asset, we create inclusive environments that reflect and are informed by the varied experiences and perspectives of scholars and students, fostering a more complex understanding of the ideas and skills at the heart of a course. Ultimately, diversity enriches education by preparing students to navigate an increasingly interconnected and multifaceted world.
UChicago, as an institution of rigorous learning, sets high expectations for students while providing access to the necessary supporting tools and resources. As a result, our institution has taken a close look at campus climates and practices. This page will help you continue considering how individual diversity may contribute to your classroom, inclusive of laboratory or discussion-based classroom formats. The following few categories describe common identities and statuses that arise when diversity and inclusion are discussed.
- 36.7% White
- 23.5% Asian
- 20.4% Hispanic/Latine
- 8.4% Multiracial
- 8.3% Black or African American
- 2.6% Unknown Race
- 0.03% American Indian or Alaska Native
- 0.02% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander
Race is a category that describes physical characteristics (e.g., hair texture, bone structure, and skin shade) and some commonalities in culture or history. Ethnicity refers to cultural, traditional, familial bonds from a group or geographic location.
According to the UChicago Common Data Set, the UChicago undergraduate domestic student population is:
Course content and choice of authors can send a message about who creates knowledge, whose perspectives count, and who is considered an expert. Include course materials written or created by people with different backgrounds and/or perspectives.
Resources: Programming at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, Office of the Provost’s Multimedia Resource Guide on Race, Conversations with the Center for Identity + Inclusion
Ability and disability refer to the range of physical, cognitive, and sensory differences that influence how individuals navigate the world. Both terms encompass the diverse ways people may move/transit, communicate, and learn. These differences may limit one or more major life activities and can shape personal experiences, influence access to opportunities, and require accommodations for equitable participation in society.
Understanding ability and disability is key to fostering inclusive environments that respect and support students’ learning by providing support for a variety of needs. More than 600 students registered with Student Disability Services (SDS) during the 2017–2018 academic year.
Not all disabilities are visible, and working with UChicago’s SDS means that students, faculty, and instructors can avoid potentially uncomfortable self-disclosures or requests for disclosures. SDS provides the structure for acknowledging variations in student ability and offers guidance on how to respond to requests for accommodation.
In addition to the quick strategies on our Getting Started page, we recommend using Universal Design for Learning, a pedagogical framework designed to create flexible learning environments to accommodate individual learning differences. Consider increasing accessibility by including ISBN numbers on your syllabi. This addition can help students find versions of required texts that are adaptable for screen readers or have audible versions.
Resources: Student Disability Services’ Faculty Guide, Student Disability Services’ Syllabus Accessibility Statement
Religion is a set of beliefs, practices, and values often centered around spiritual ideas, deities, or moral frameworks. Religion shapes students’ worldviews, ethics, ways of interpreting knowledge, ways of engaging in discussions, and interactions with diverse perspectives.
In the 2016 campus climate survey, students, academics, and staff indicated a belonging to 19 different spiritual and nonreligious practices. Religious expression and practice is often personal, and course content may privilege certain religious perspectives as thought is informed by authors’ religious backgrounds.
Additionally, traditional holy dates pose a logistical consideration for students as holy dates and prayer times may influence how students engage in educational opportunities.
Resources: The University’s Policy on Religious Accommodation for Missed Classes, Assignments, and Exams states: Students who miss class, assignments, or exams to observe a religious holiday must be accommodated as follows: (i) absences may not be counted as a missed class in any course in which attendance is a measure of academic performance; (ii) reasonable extensions of time must be given, without academic penalty, for missed assignments; and (iii) exams must be reasonably rescheduled without academic penalty.
Nationality describes the country where a person holds citizenship or a sense of belonging. Not only does nationality shape one’s cultural practices, language use, values, and perspectives, but national and global political events have different implications for international students. International students may have VISA statuses that affect eligibility to engage in different extracurricular opportunities.
According to the UChicago Common Data Set, 16.2% of undergraduate University of Chicago students were classified as international students, with large numbers of international graduate students in almost all divisions.
Nationality can affect one’s language use, worldview and flexibility in worldviews, and students' approaches to education and authority. Acknowledging nationality in pedagogy allows educators to incorporate global perspectives and foster cross-cultural understanding, creating a richer, more inclusive learning experience for all students.
Additionally, students who were born outside the U.S. may hold a variety of immigration statuses that depend on college enrollment. These students are often required to attend additional orientations and adhere to policies for their F-1 or J-1 visa stamp.
As Illinois has one of the highest populations of undocumented students, some members of our student body may also be undocumented or DACA-eligible. This may require discretion and may affect students’ ability to partake in certain extracurricular opportunities.
Resources: UChicago’s Office of International Affairs, American Immigration Council’s 2023 Report on Undocumented Students in Higher Education
Students who are first in their family to attend college are considered “first-generation” students. These students often navigate unique challenges, such as unfamiliarity with academic systems and a less experiential family support for navigating higher education.
To date, approximately 25% of UChicago undergraduates are the firsts among their respective family histories to attend college. This means that a quarter of our student body may not have family members who have experienced college, and therefore have the cultural capital to help them navigate the campus environment or advocate for research opportunities.
Recognizing first-generation status in teaching helps educators offer tailored support and mentorship, ensuring these students thrive academically while bridging gaps in access to resources and institutional knowledge.
Be proactive: Consider encouraging active learning, which has been empirically shown to decrease the achievement gap for underrepresented minorities and first-generation college students, particularly in STEM fields. In your courses, try providing information and access to campus resources and activities designed to acclimate students to UChicago.
University of Chicago undergraduate students rank in the very top percentage of graduates from their secondary schools. However, those schools have varying levels of urbanicity, religiosity, and funding—which affects how students transition to UChicago. Graduate students may also have received different levels of preparation in their undergraduate programs and may have varying levels foundational concepts in their discipline.
Differences in educational background affect students' readiness, skills, and approaches to learning. Considering varied educational backgrounds enables educators to create differentiated instruction, offer scaffolded support, and build inclusive environments in which all learners can succeed, regardless of their prior educational experiences.
Be proactive: Students enter your course with different classroom experiences and expectations. They also have different levels of writing, communication, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills. If you teach first-year students, talk to them about how high school and college are different. Perhaps create a diagnostic quiz to help gauge what undergraduate and graduate students know about your content, providing resources for students who may want extra practice or refreshers on particular concepts or skills, and recognizing the strengths that your students have.
Engaging Diversity
Diversity of thought is crucial to critical thinking and rigorous inquiry. The different ways students grew up are an asset and affects how they interact with educators and peers. These experiences can also affect students' attitudes toward various disciplines, the books they read, the papers they write, the way they study, and how they participate in class. Inclusive pedagogy embraces the intersectional diversity of our teaching and learning community and aims to contextualize learning in meaningful, relevant, and accessible ways.
Students are more likely to persist and thrive in university settings where:
- Their capacity to success is built, reinforced, and maintained throughout their time at the institution.
- There is high-quality and frequent student-faculty interaction.
- They can make meaningful connections with the content.
- Interactions within the classroom convey a positive learning climate.
The University of Chicago Campus Climate Survey in 2016 and 2023 showed that members of our campus community across all subgroups (e.g., race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability status, and gender identification) have a significantly more positive perception of their proximal climate than the overall institutional climate. Research shows the consequences of negative climates range from students leaving an institution to students struggling to learn while trying to fit into an institution's culture. Creating an inclusive environment through one’s teaching can begin addressing this situation.
Inclusive Pedagogy
Though the word "inclusive” originated from the field of disability studies in the 1990s, it has since been used in the field of education to include race, ethnicity, and gender in addition to ability (Dewsbury & Brame, 2019a; Stentiford & Koutsouris, 2020, p.12-13). Originally, inclusivity was presented to make environments more accessible for everyone. Common examples of accommodations in the built environment which benefit everyone are automatic doors and curb cuts. In the field of education, being “inclusive” means welcoming and supporting students with diverse and/or minoritized identities, backgrounds, and abilities, without tokenization (i.e., being presented as a representative of a unique group or known for being “unique” due to their identity). Research shows that when students feel included and their diverse experiences are valued in the classroom, their motivation, retention, engagement, and performance improve significantly (Hockings, 2010; Quaye & Harper, 2014; Dewsbury & Brame, 2019b). Whether you are an experienced or new educator, adopting inclusive pedagogy practices benefits all students.
Inclusive pedagogy describes a variety of educational approaches that engage all students in meaningful educational experiences through the recognition of diverse backgrounds, abilities, and perspectives as an asset. To teach inclusively means intentionally designing learning environments and experiences where every student feels respected and capable of contributing. Most importantly, these approaches guide educators to “respond to individual differences between learners but avoids the marginalization that can occur when some students are treated differently” (Florian & Spratt, 2013, p.119).
An Inclusive Climate
An inclusive climate is an environment in which all students have access to the tools and resources they need to participate fully in learning and feel a sense of belonging in the classroom. It is the ideal, while “chilly climates” are ones that feel exclusionary, or assume students will be “weeded out” after a few weeks.
An inclusive climate can improve students' sense of belonging and their motivation to be fully engaged in learning. Many students feel like they "fit" in their chosen university environments, while some historically underrepresented students report feeling less of a sense of belonging in the absence of students and educators who share an identity that is salient to them. For example, a female student in a chemistry class may feel a greater sense of belonging observing other women in the classroom than if she is in a classroom predominantly composed of men. Although instructors cannot change the numerical diversity in any given class, they can make efforts within their curricula to highlight diversity.
Inclusive Climates
An inclusive course climate welcomes and engages students from all backgrounds and encourages everyone to share their different perspectives. It allows students to fully participate in the classroom experience and assures that the course content itself attends to issues of student diversity. Examples of factors that contribute to inclusive classroom climates include:
- Avoiding scheduling exams or project presentations on any religious or cultural holiday.
- Encouraging regular participation from all students.
- Sharing resources that may be useful for students with different levels of accessibility or who have different financial resources and integrating various levels of course assessment to account for different approaches to learning.
- Incorporating a variety of different course content into your syllabus.
Exclusive Climates
An exclusive course climate is usually created by factors that inadvertently exclude or by making generalizations about certain groups of students, thereby elevating the voices of others. Examples of factors that contribute to exclusive classroom climates include:
- Scheduling exams or project presentations on religious or cultural holidays.
- Calling on, engaging, and validating specific genders, classes, or races of students while ignoring other students during class.
- Using incorrect terms to reference groups of people.
- Assigning projects that ignore learning and socioeconomic differences.
- Asking people with invisible disabilities to identify themselves in class.
- Not considering opportunities to incorporate course materials featuring people from diverse backgrounds into your syllabus.