Texas State University

The president's DEI Training Task Force will "1) inventory current DEI training at Texas State for faculty, staff, and student employees; 2) explore and determine if DEI training should be mandatory for all faculty, staff, and student employees; 3) if the recommendation is to require this training, determine what form(s) it should take; 4) engage in benchmarking with peer institutions that have implemented similar training; and 5) submit recommendations to the Council for Inclusive Excellence for review and feedback, and then to my Cabinet and me for final review and approval."

The Multicultural Curriculum Transformation and Research Institute had its annual meeting May 23-27, 2022. Faculty are encouraged to attend and change their course curriculum to have the MULT designation which signifies 60 percent multicultural content. “To date, over 200 courses at Texas State have been transformed through the institute.”

As part of its Bias Response Protocol, TSU "encourages" staff to "complete a Bias Incident Report" which is "any conduct, speech, expression, or action that is motivated in part or in whole by bias or prejudice, hatred, or bigotry and directed at any individual or group."

The College of Liberal Arts offers a Diversity Studies minor which "provides conceptual frameworks for exploring new perspectives which recover the history and creative expressions previously excluded by the traditional approaches to higher education."

One of the purposes of the "Multicultural Curriculum Transformation and Research Institute" is to encourage "Faculty members who wish to transform courses that have not been formally identified as having multicultural content or multicultural perspectives." Stipends of up to $1,200 will be provided to faculty interested in "infusing multicultural content and inclusive pedagogical practices" into their respective curriculums.

The university president "approved the creation of an Associate Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) position.

The Department of Fine Arts website reads, "Our mission as a community of artists: to combat and dismantle racism, sexism, and heteronormative cisgender dominance in theater and in theater training. Formalizing our goals in our syllabi, our classrooms, and our stages to breakdown and disrupt traditional theater training hierarchies; to hold space in creative collaboration in our classrooms and rehearsal spaces promoting and utilizing Antiracist Pedagogy and Culturally Responsive Teaching Methods."

On April 14, 2021, as part of the TXST Social Justice Speaker Series, “civil rights advocate and lawyer, legal scholar, and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” Michelle Alexander shared her “recommendations for promoting practices to achieve diversity, equity, inclusion, and healing” and helped to “raise awareness about the experiences of historically marginalized and underrepresented communities due to structural, systemic, and institutional forms of discrimination and inequities.”

The Center of Institutional Inclusive Excellence Student Initiatives provides a number of services and programs “to retain underrepresented students through degree completion and success through retention initiatives.”

The mission of the Center for Diversity and Gender Studies (within College of Liberal Arts) is to "assist students and faculty in preparing for a pluralistic society by providing resources that encourage the infusion of interdisciplinary curriculum that addresses race, class, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity."

On July 28, 2023, TSU's President published an email sent to faculty and staff that addresses Texas law SB 17, which prohibits public higher education institutions from maintaining diversity offices and/or programs. The email reads in part as follows: "As part of TXST’s ongoing efforts to best serve our students, and in light of the factors stated above, I have decided to dissolve the Division of Inclusive Excellence effective August 1, 2023. The division’s work directly supporting student success initiatives will now be accomplished through the Division of Student Success. Current IE employees working in support of student success initiatives have the opportunity to be reassigned to new positions in the Division of Student Success. Employees in the federally funded TRIO programs will move to the College of Education to continue serving primarily pre-college students from disadvantaged backgrounds."

TSU published its Staff Council meeting minutes that explains how Texas law SB 17 will effect the university. The minutes clarify what would be prohibited, including: "hiring or assigning employees to perform the duties of a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) office/unit/division..." and "requiring or soliciting DEI statements or providing preferential treatment based on the provision of a DEI statement."

TSU Libraries provides a Black Lives Matter resource guide which is "designed to be a resource for anyone interested in placing BLM into broader context through history and African American Studies."

On May 11, 2022, the university held a separate “Unity Graduation Celebration” that “recognizes the academic achievements of historically underrepresented students through an intersectional approach of solidarity, inclusivity, and representation.”

TSU includes its "Diversity and Inclusion Policy Statement" as part of its 2023-2024 Catalogs which reads in part as follows: "Texas State believes that freedom of thought, innovation and creativity are fundamental characteristics of a community of scholars. To promote such a learning environment, the university has a special responsibility to seek diversity, to promote inclusion, to instill a global perspective in its students, and to nurture sensitivity, dialogue and mutual respect."