What the office does
The Office of Inclusive Excellence is led by Dr. Renata Solheim-Ayodele, chief inclusive excellence officer since 2023 and a member of the chancellor’s cabinet. Before Porter she taught industrial and organizational psychology for eleven years. The office has four staff, and its main assignment comes straight from the strategic plan: close the outcome gaps for first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students.
In practice that means three things: looking hard at the data, funding the fixes that work, and helping departments change practices that quietly cost some students more than others — a required textbook nobody can afford, a lab section only offered at 7 a.m., an internship that is unpaid.
What it does not do
The office does not investigate complaints. If you have experienced discrimination or harassment, the Office of Equity & Access handles it under the nondiscrimination policy, and sexual misconduct goes to Title IX. Bias incidents that are not policy violations can be reported through bias incident reporting; this office reviews the anonymized patterns each semester, not individual cases. Disability accommodations are handled by Disability & Accessibility Services.
The numbers it watches
| Measure | 2022 cohort | 2025 cohort | 2027 goal |
|---|---|---|---|
| First-year retention gap, first-generation vs. continuing-generation | 6.8 points | 4.1 points | under 3 |
| First-year retention gap, Pell recipients vs. non-Pell | 5.9 points | 4.6 points | under 3 |
| Students in a paid applied-learning placement by graduation, first-generation | 61% | 72% | 80% |
| Courses using no-cost or low-cost course materials | 9% | 23% | 35% |
Figures come from Institutional Research and are reported to the cabinet each semester. A number that does not move gets a written explanation and a changed approach.
Programs
- Inclusive teaching grants: $1,500 stipends for faculty to redesign a high-enrollment course with a high D/F/withdraw rate, run with faculty development. Twenty-two awarded last year.
- Affordable materials fund: pays to replace a required textbook with an open or library-licensed one.
- Campus climate survey: every three years; the next one runs in March 2027. The 2024 survey had a 31 percent response rate, and the results are public.
- Search advocates: trained staff and faculty who sit on hiring committees and keep searches to the posted criteria.
- Supplier diversity: with Business Services, helping small and locally owned firms bid on university work (supplier diversity).
The office also funds, but does not run, the student-facing centers in Founders Union: the First-Generation Center, LGBTQ+ services and the Veteran Resource Center.
Working with the office
Departments can request a data consultation — a one-hour look at their own course or program gaps — through the office email. Student organizations can apply for co-sponsorship of events up to $750 per semester; applications close on the 15th of each month. Office hours with Dr. Solheim-Ayodele are Wednesdays, 1:00–3:00 p.m., in Founders Union 230.
The office publishes the campus calendar of heritage months and religious observances each August, with the dates on which major exams should not be scheduled; students who need an absence for a holiday use the religious observance accommodation process, which instructors are required to honor. Event planners can borrow the office’s accessibility kit — an assistive listening system, a portable ramp, large-print programs — with a week’s notice.
Every spring the office publishes a short report on the year: what moved, what did not, and where the money went. The 2025–26 report found that the redesigned sections of College Algebra and Statics cut the D/F/withdraw rate by eleven points for first-generation students and by seven for everyone else, which is the usual pattern — changes made for one group of students tend to help all of them.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. The office, its leader, its retention gaps and its survey results are invented, and no real students’ outcomes are described here.