The Colorado Department of Higher Education statewide plan for higher education, Colorado Rises, calls for 66 percent of Colorado adults ages 25-34 to earn a degree or certificate by 2025. The only way to reach this goal—the only way that we can provide the skills our employers and shared economic future depend on—is to make major progress on closing equity gaps.

It is this reality that drives our equity agenda, which received a major boost thanks to a $500,000 Talent, Innovation and Equity (TIE) grant from Lumina Foundation in 2017. As part of this project, Colorado is advancing several key strategies with the goal of increasing African American, Hispanic, and Native American attainment by 6-8 percent in four years: Staging three campuses interventions; creating a faculty toolkit for inclusive teaching, presented here; and recruiting an Equity Champions Coalition and Steering Committee to ground our work in best practices and lived experiences.

We are indebted to Dr. Brenda Allen, former Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Colorado Denver and the Anschutz Medical Campus, and Quill Phillips, College Equity Officer at Community College of Aurora and CEO of QP Equity and Inclusion Consulting, for curating these inclusive teaching resources. We thank the TIE Steering Committee members, listed below, for their ongoing input and insights into making this the best resource possible.