Diversity and Inclusion
CIIS strives to promote a dialogue on difference, and develop curriculum and pedagogy that reflect a commitment to the diversity of the world’s cultures and spiritual traditions.
CIIS is committed to providing an open, fair, inclusive, and nondiscriminatory environment for all individuals across differences of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, age, physical ability, and medical condition.
We seek to increase the presence, representation, and inclusion of U.S. historically underrepresented people of color, international, bilingual, and bicultural students, faculty, and staff; and to provide an environment that will attract and retain individuals identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and intersex.
Click here for the 2007-2010 CIIS Diversity Plan.
Student Demographics
Fall 2009
- 72 percent are women
- 22 percent identify as students of color
- 6 percent are international students
- Students came from 33 states and 15 countries
- Ages range from 20 to over 75, with 25 percent 26-30 years of age
Faculty Demographics
- 49 percent full-time women faculty
- 23 percent faculty of color
Student Groups
The People of Color Group
Composed of faculty, staff and students at CIIS, the People of Color (POC) group explores and promotes solidarity in the struggle against racism, functions as an intellectual/conceptual support group for the deconstruction of institutional racism, advocates for social change in the CIIS community, and empowers members through the celebration of difference as well as shared experiences.
Queer@CIIS
An advocacy and support group dedicated to making the academic and co-curricular environments more relevant and more inclusive for people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.
UNITE!
To advocate for the building of alliances among diverse students To actively promote and work toward social justice and diversity goals at CIIS.
AWARE (Awakening to Whiteness and Racism Everywhere)
The AWARE group is open to students, faculty, and staff who want to participate in a process towards unlearning racism, examining their experience of white social privilege, confronting histories of silence, shame, and complicity, and moving towards alliance-building with people of color for racial justice at CIIS and beyond. Out of respect for people of color, we meet as a caucus group of white people. We consider it very important that we don't impose on people of color the role of "teaching us how we are racist" or the need to care-take people who might be at various stages of their own consciousness around racism or oppression.
International Students
CIIS provides extensive resources for international students through the International Student Advisor, who plays an important role in promoting diversity at the Institute. Please see the International Students web page for more information.
Scholarship Resources
As part of CIIS' commitment to diversity, we offer several scholarships each year to incoming students. Scholarships are based on three criteria: financial need is a primary consideration, racial and ethnic background of the student, and CIIS academic program recommendation. View a list of available scholarships.
In addition to the institutional scholarships that CIIS offers to promote diversity, there are many additional scholarship resources available in support of diversity. Please download this document for a listing of some of these resources.
CIIS Definition for Diversity
CIIS is committed to providing an open, fair, inclusive, non-discriminatory environment for all individuals across differences of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, socio-economic status, ethnicity, age, physical ability, or medical condition. We seek to increase the presence, representation and inclusion of U.S. historically under-represented people of color, international, bilingual and bicultural students, faculty and staff; and, to provide an environment that will attract and retain individuals identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning and intersex (LGBTQQI).
