Examples of CAB Efforts and Related Badges

CAB Digital Badges Initiative 

Annually culture, access and belonging (CAB) efforts in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and MSU Extension are gathered, scored based on criteria developed by the CANR Culture, Access and Belonging Committee, and then are grouped into three categories: Platinum, Gold and Green with Platinum being the highest level. (See more on the CAB Badge Project and process.)

CAB Core Area Implementation Examples/Strategies

Culture and Climate

• Establish a CAB Committee in your unit or department.
• Have faculty and staff that engage in CAB committees in CANR, MSU, and/or in your unit or department.
• Develop a list of identified efforts in areas of culture, access and belonging (e.g., trainings, workshops, seminars, surveys, accessibility efforts).
• Establish community norms in your unit or department.
• Develop a mechanism for reporting on CAB work across the missions of CANR.
• Assess the climate of your unit or department through annual surveys.

Training and Professional Development

  • Display effort to have all members of your unit or department (including students) have a baseline competency in understanding and articulating the importance of CAB through trainings and other development opportunities.
  • Provide funding to support CAB professional development for all faculty and staff.
  • Participate in college-level CAB programs.
  • Provide examples of programming in the MSU community and local community (internal and external from MSU).

Teaching, Outreach, Research and Service

  • Provide examples of CAB community collaboration projects or programs that your unit or department is currently doing.
  • Build infrastructure to continue to champion and implement CAB work through committees in CANR, MSU and nationally.
  • Ensure your unit or department includes various perspectives and that access and belonging are embedded in curricular content and instruction.
  • Display efforts to collaborate with minority-serving institutions, Hispanic-serving institutions and/or tribal colleges.

Recruitment, Hiring and Retention

  • Participating in the Academic Achievement Graduate Assistantship program.
  • Displaying efforts to increase culture, access and belonging through grants and participation in CANR pre-college programs (e.g., STEM-Fee Jr MANRRS, Multicultural Apprenticeship Program, ANR Institute for Multicultural, ANR Institute for Multicultural Students- Bilingual, Michigan Indian Leadership Program, CANR Pathfinders).
  • Include the CANR CAB Statement and OCAB contact information in all unit programming materials and course syllabi produced by CANR units.

Leadership

  • Communicate to faculty, staff and students in your unit or department the importance of making CAB programs, projects and initiatives available to staff and employees of all rank and role, including the importance of providing release time and recognition to all (i.e., hourly and salary) employees
  • Show leadership areas to create and support initiatives that make CAB a focus and guiding principle:
                   o Develop, implement and assess a unit or department CAB plan.
                   o Establish leaders who will ensure their individual unit has an active CAB task force with CAB strategic plan objectives to achieve fair and equitable outcomes.
                   o Have the unit and department leaders support the efforts of the CANR Office of Culture, Access, and Belonging.
                   o Have leaders in each unit or department create and implement a unit policy to hold all community members accountable to center CAB work in every role and align their behavior accordingly.
                   o Have leaders support CAB professional development for all CANR and MSU Extension employees
  • Develop a set of guidelines/metrics for CAB work per faculty, academic, field and support staff that are included in all employee evaluation documents.
  • Assess, discuss and document CAB practices, initiatives and reforms for all positions as part of annual evaluation practices.
  • Add recognition of a recurring budget line for CAB activities.