 Good morning. I have to, not have to, but it would probably be wise of me to augment the, that wonderful introduction with just three other pieces of information because they relate directly to the comments that I plan to offer this morning. I have the busiest signature block of anybody that I know on email. Because I'm a research professor at the University of the Virgin Islands, which is relevant. I'm also a senior fellow at the Marie Fielder Center at Fielding Graduate University and a senior scholar at the American Association, or Association of American Colleges and Universities. All three of those are relevant. And the fourth one, I'm the director of strategic initiatives for something called the Center for Advancement of STEM Leadership. That's also relevant. I want to start by saying, making an observation. As noted in my introduction, I've been a program evaluator for over 40 years. I finished my PhD in 1979 in measurement and evaluation. So before most of you were a twinkle in your parent's eye, I was a practicing program evaluator. And so I've spent a lot of time as a professional evaluator even during the 20 years that I served as a dean. So the first comment that I want to make is to generalize from evaluators to virtually all professionals. So I think I'm going out on a limb a little bit, but I think this fits. Most practicing professionals today rely upon being known for the methods they use more than their ability to conceptualize and dream. What I want to do today is invite you to let go of some of the concerns of dealing with diversity, inclusion, affirmative action, access and universal design and all of the other labels that we are caught up in in attempting to fix some things that we know are very wrong about the systems that we work with and encourage you to dream about what the system might be. Because only in getting outside of those specific fixes for tomorrow can we plan a better long term future. So I want us to think about inclusive excellence as an aspiration and expectation, a commitment and a defining movement in higher education. And the reason I say that is because higher education is indeed the gateway to environmental sciences and to the things that this whole conference is all about. And because it is the gateway is also the battleground. CS is an organization that is congressionally mandated. It's an advisory group to the National Science Foundation. And they've done something I find quite extraordinary for a group of engineers and computer scientists. They've been dreaming about what it would take to transform American STEM into what we would like for it to be. And they have three core recommendations. The democratization of science and engineering, making science and engineering more democratic. Second, an inclusive epistemology focused on implementation research. So broaden the range of epistemologies that we find effective, useful, and that can be exchanged and used in planning and conversation. And third, a shared accountability for broadening participation. Because they believe, as I do, that effective broadening participation cannot be realized without a cultural and institutional change, particularly in higher education institutions. And we know that changing higher education is just a little bit easier than turning a battleship while it is in harbor. So I want to define a little bit about what inclusive excellence might look like. I also happen to spend some of my time on what's called the Inclusive Excellence Commission, which is a group of the Association of American Colleges and universities charged with plotting a future for inclusive excellence in American higher education. One of the most important words is stance. Inclusive excellence is not about a list or checklist or a place you get to. It's not about symbols or structures or politics. It is about a stance you take towards your work. Distance the institutions take towards the mission. We have wonderful mission statements often, but the stance we take towards them is very difficult to find. And it certainly doesn't animate our actions on a day to day basis. I also think that inclusive excellence is a way of defining and pursuing higher education goals and doing that systematically and with critical reflection on both practice and outcomes on promises and net effects. Typically, we focus on the first of those pairs, but not the second. So inclusive and excellence are two words that we use not commonly, but we do use as part of our English language. But I would argue that when you put the two words together, they change their meaning. So it's not just inclusion and excellence. Excellence changes the definition of inclusion. And even more important, inclusion redefines what excellence means. So in the case of the CS call, the byline is we will not be successful in transforming STEM in the United States until we make excellence something that is contingent upon inclusion. You cannot have excellent science if it is not inclusive science. And inclusion doesn't mean benevolent representation by well thinking others. It means participation. It means that we will not be at a place where we can talk about inclusive excellence until we stop needing the workarounds to ensure that the interest of all parties is identified and met. Also, inclusive excellence relates to this notion of intersectionality, which often is dropped into a lot of our discussion. We say, oh, yes. Yesterday was the international day for pay inequity. And then we drop in the thing. Yes, yesterday is a day when the average woman has earned as much as the average male did during last year. It takes this much longer for the average woman to earn that same amount. And then we drop in. But if you're an African American woman, that won't happen until August. If you're a Native American woman, it won't happen until later in the fall. If you're a Hispanic woman, it won't happen until October, early November. So intersectionality has been used as a way of saying, yes, I understand this inequity and I'm absolved of being the bad person because I know it's there. But it doesn't mean that I've attempted to do anything about it. So inclusive excellence is an aspiration and a stance. And the key thing I want to point your attention to here is that it means redefining the boundary definitions of excellence. When we draw excellence in our minds, it is always related to our worldview. In the US, we're very fixed fixated on this notion of merit. And so our definition of excellence is all tied up with this notion of merit, which is why it shakes us to our core when we have scandals like the recent admission scandals at elite institutions. Because our faith in meritocracy is probably as strong as our faith in democracy. If we didn't believe in the rising up of merit to determine who has power, we would recognize that democracy is a hollow promise. So inclusive excellence for an organization has to change the way that organization thinks about excellence. That's why I'm not giving you this as something I encourage you to go home and fix tonight. Because if you try to, you'll run out of scotch before you give up on trying to solve the problem. No, this is something you dream about. But you dream actively, and you dream vocally, and you dream in a group, and you dream purposefully, and you agitate purposefully because people are always entitled to have a dream. And your dream is less threatening to me than your plan and your requirement and your demand. So if we can all dream and aspire to inclusive excellence, we may just move in that direction. And that's a direction that has us looking at and worrying about outcomes and not just our intents, not just our methods. As a program evaluator, I know that if anybody challenges the results of my evaluation, I take my methods and say, look, I use an RCT, random controlled treatment. And that's the gold standard. So you have to believe me. Well, the reality is no scientific data is ever compelling. It's persuasive. If it's done well, presented well, it'll persuade you, but nothing compels you to say, oh, yes, now that's it. It can never be anything else. So the best we can hope for is to be persuasive, which means that the amount of attention and energy we put in our methods should be tailored to the kind of impact that we can get from those methods, which is at best to create a persuasive argument. I love Arizona State University's new tagline. Because it says Arizona State University wants to be known for who it includes rather than who it excludes. For years, higher education was about how many students can you reject? I happened to be at the University of Maryland during the time when they wanted to get their MBA rankings up. And the dean of the college said, I know how to do that. And so they went out and marketed the program so that more people applied who didn't get in. And their ranking went up because they're most selective. Same instructors, same courses, everything else the same. But the perception of the merit of those individuals who got in, manipulating this meritocratic argument and tickling our meritocracy, funny bone. So if you are willing to take this journey, inclusion and plans for it can be assigned and monitored. You can have meetings and you can and should make plans. But ultimately, this is about redefining what we mean by what we do and how we go about doing it. The stance we take towards that work. So if an organization approaches inclusive excellence as inclusion or as inclusive excellence, then inclusion becomes a natural and defining criteria. So I say the irony of inclusive excellence is that it is best expressed not as excellence in inclusion, which is what we talk about now. We are so inclusive. We are so diverse. No, it's not about excellence in inclusion. It is excellence because of inclusion. We are excellent because for all who desire it, the opportunity to come in and benefit and produce and to prosper from what this organization has to offer is available in different forms, different measures, but is available. So if you will think about, imagine what inclusion in an inclusive excellence frame would be like. So I want to give one example to make this concrete and tie it directly to the theme of this meeting, lest you think this is just lofty thinking and doesn't really apply to environmental sciences. I mentioned earlier that I'm a research professor at the University of the Virgin Islands, and I have two dissertation students, one who is doing a dissertation on the establishment and management of marine protected areas. So in the Caribbean, marine protected areas are recognized globally for enhancing the resilience marine ecosystems to the impacts of climate change and other human activities. So this, even this morning, we've been hearing about these issues and the need to have all perspectives at the table. If we allow ourselves to dream, then the marine protected areas will not be managed on behalf of indigenous people. We would not be soliciting and requesting input from indigenous people. We would not be worrying about how we're going to have the multicultural validity associated with having our outcomes tested against the needs and wishes of all the different parts of the community, because all the parts of the community would be there with appropriate voice. So clearly, science as related to protecting, investing in, cultivating the planet is a science that could not be considered excellent, unless it has first been inclusive and that inclusion being something that we plan for, we dream about, we work together to have flourish over time. Environmental stewardship is dependent upon collaboration. Who could argue with that? What is the basis of collaboration? Understanding and sharing power effectively, not loaning power or forgiving power, but sharing power. It's also linked to social justice considerations, learning to respect divergent perspectives, addressing wicked problems in context, complex environments, and advancing creative solutions steeped in the deep and varied experiences of all stakeholders. And so I argue that inclusive excellence is a star worth hitching our wagon to. And by doing so, we'll find that there's more synchronicity, there's more happy rhythm, there's more areas of agreement and collaboration possible than we would have ever thought could be done negotiating over the kind of solutions that we now worry about based upon methods.