Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

The sense of belonging is the degree to which students, staff, and faculty feel connected to the institutions via our intentional and unintentional everyday behaviors, policies, and culture. It is the experience of mattering or feeling cared about, accepted, respected, valued, and important to the campus community, and it is critical
for retaining all students and employees—particularly those from BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and other historically underserved communities.

Anoka Tech will increase employees’, students’, and community members’ sense of belonging to the institution and amongst each other.

Restorative practices are processes freely entered into where honesty, accountability, empathy, and humility are used to build and strengthen relationships, repair harm, and work together to co-create a healthy community. They require seeing a person as fully human and in relationship with others and engaging in dialogue-driven, healing-centered and community-based practices.

Anoka Tech will become a restorative institution by acknowledging how our nation’s, state’s, and colleges’ histories require responsibility and action to bring about healing, justice, and equity.

Inclusion is the process of co-creating a culture that builds trusting relationships through collaboration, flexibility and fairness, especially with and for people who have been historically excluded from such spaces. It enables and supports every person being valued and all voices being acknowledged and respected.

Anoka Tech will ensure an inclusive and accessible climate and culture for students, employees and community members.

There are significant demographic shifts happening in our community and being responsive to these changes is essential to promoting and sustaining the success of all students, staff, and faculty. Diversity is what makes each of us unique and includes our backgrounds, personality, life experiences, beliefs, and all the things that make us who we are.

Anoka Tech will increase the representation and inclusion of BIPOC and other historically underserved communities in our employee and student populations, and in programming.

Our mission and work embody our growth-through-effort mindset. Our success is based on our dedication to student, employee, and community growth through lifelong learning, content and skill mastery, and a willingness to embrace feedback, challenges, and changes with perseverance, practice, and support. Growth praises the learning process and not just the outcome.

Informed by data, Anoka Tech will provide opportunities for students, employees, and community members to learn, grow and improve professionally, academically and personally.

Equity is recognizing and respecting the unique abilities and contributions of each student and employee (especially those who have been historically and systemically underserved) and providing the necessary and customized resources, opportunities and support needed to achieve their professional, academic and personal goals.

Anoka Tech will establish and implement plans to regularly assess and bolster our students’, employees’ and community members’ access to resources, opportunities, experiences and outcomes.

To sustain the inclusive communities we are creating, we must design, implement, and support structures and initiatives that enable our current and future students’, employees’, and community members’ empowerment, growth, development, and equitable access to and responsible usage of resources. By honoring the contributions made in the past that laid the groundwork for this moment, we will continue to build an inclusive and equitable educational and work experience and environment, and community.

Anoka Tech will review and continue implementing equitable practices, policies, and procedures that will ensure continuity into the future.