Minnesota State Equity 2030
In June 2019, we set a critical goal: By 2030, Minnesota State will eliminate the educational equity gaps at every Minnesota State college and university. It is a staggeringly ambitious goal and one that will require both intentional systems and culture change and innovation, as well as advocacy and leadership with partners and stakeholders across the state to accomplish.
The core value for Minnesota State is to provide an opportunity for all Minnesotans to create a better future for themselves, for their families, and for their communities.
The focus of our work includes:
- Enhancing access and student success
- Providing Minnesota with the talent it needs
- Anchoring the communities and regions we serve
While there is only one goal for Equity 2030 – closing the educational equity gaps across race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and geographic location by the year 2030 – achieving that goal requires:
- Intentional systems and culture change
- Coordination, innovation, and capacity building
- Steadfast focus of leadership and empowerment
- Collaboration with partners and stakeholders across the state
To accomplish the goal of Equity 2030, we must be able to ensure that the strength of our diverse institutions is not lost while at the same time working to make sure our system can continue to serve all residents of Minnesota. There have been and already are significant and on-going equity-focused efforts underway across all Minnesota State colleges and universities. Equity 2030 seeks to bridge efforts occurring within divisions and institutions, creating an intentional statewide culture of equity-minded collaboration and resulting in equitable practices embedded throughout our institutions.
To reach Equity 2030, Minnesota State recognizes that it must adapt and change its systems and cultures to meet the needs of today’s students, rather than expect today’s students to learn or adapt to the systems and culture of yesterday’s higher education. Realizing these changes will require intentionally prioritizing capacity-building to make change across all levels of Minnesota State and empowering individuals regardless of title or responsibility to examine, explore, and experiment with evidence-based innovation to close attainment gaps.
Students face many challenges outside their academic and career pursuits. The conditions and factors that have created disparities are not easily siloed and solved. Jobs, housing, education, employment, health, and food security are parts of a deeply interconnected system. To ultimately be successful, Equity 2030 requires not only partnership and collaboration among our schools, but in building and strengthening partnerships across sectors with businesses, industry, nonprofits, K-12, philanthropic organizations, local and state government, and within our communities.
Minnesota State acknowledges the land and the tribal nations upon whose land this work is being accomplished. We acknowledge that we are on Dakota land. We recognize the Native Nations of this region who have called this place home over thousands of years including the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), Lakota, Nakota, Ho-Chunk, and Cheyenne. We acknowledge the ongoing colonialism and the legacies of violence, displacement, migration, and settlement that foreground the formation of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities and subsequently this report. We commit to advancing critical efforts to understand and address these legacies, including the larger conversation of reparations, repatriation, and redress urgently needed for the scope of ethical acknowledgment to begin in earnest.
This statement was developed by the Minnesota State Equity 2030 Chancellor’s Fellows and is reproduced here with their permission.
With thanks to Iyekiyapiwin Darlene St. Clair (2020) for her guidance that “land acknowledgements need to include the present, be more than a list, refer to a commitment, and give some broader context.”