Multicultural Student Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison

In keeping with the Center's historic legacy, the primary mission of the Multicultural Student Center is: To collaboratively strengthen and sustain an inclusive campus where all students, particularly students of color and other historically underserved students, are engaged and can realize an authentic Wisconsin Experience.

We accomplish this by:

• Cultivating and modeling a safe, inclusive and socially just environment for all members of the UW-Madison community
• Centering our work in a social justice framework
• Promoting personal, social and academic development, integrative learning, and professional success
• Providing support and creating a sense of belonging for students of color and other historically underserved students
• Organizing and facilitating a variety of diversity and social justice programs and discussions for the entire campus community
• Collaborating with academic departments and other campus partners to address emerging and lingering racial inequalities on the UW-Madison campus

CORE VALUES

• We welcome all students.
• We engage and treat everyone in a respectful, responsive, and socially just manner.
• We provide a safe space and resources specifically for students of color.
• We acknowledge a diversity of cultural identities and foster a sense of belonging.
• We provide opportunities for community building among students.
• We collaborate with academic and other campus and community partners.
• We incorporate student input into programmatic and policy decisions.

VISION: Our vision is designed to challenge us and help us to become the best that we can be as an organization. By the end of 2013, we will:

1. Develop, in collaboration with other campus partners, an initiative to help students of color transition and matriculate through to graduation.
2. Identify and strengthen a responsive, multi-tiered framework for serving students of color at a large, predominantly white Research 1 institution.
3. Improve campus climate by fostering and supporting students' ability to [live the Wisconsin Experience by advocating for themselves and being active on campus and in the community.
4. Align with the campus strategic framework for diversity and inclusion and participate in the on-going development of the strategic framework for diversity and inclusion for the Division of Student Life.
5. Be known as a key place for expanding and supporting transformative educational experiences around issues of race, identity and social justice.
6. Be a vibrant, welcoming place for community building.

The Institute for Justice Education and Transformation is an initiative of the Multicultural Student Center that provides and supports campus-wide opportunities for deep reflection and action around issues of Social Justice for Multicultural Students and their allies. Our goals are:

• To develop multi-issue (intersectional) social justice literacy
• To celebrate and reclaim the profound legacy of student movements
• To enhance students' capacities to build effective and sustainable coalitions, organizations, and/or movements in their contemporary context
• To foster and support transformative leaders working towards an increasingly equitable and just society