CEC 20/20 Project & Pioneers

Update on Pioneer/CEC 2020 Project
February 10, 2021
Mary Ruth Coleman

Thank you for the honor of representing the Pioneers in CEC’s important 20/20 initiative. The 20/20 project is charged with creating a vision of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in all of CEC endeavors from individual members through Divisions and Units. There are 3 main goals of the 20/20 project:

1. Create a more diverse membership and programs to support a more diverse membership (Diversity Leadership Program, Mentoring, Caucuses, etc.)
2. Promote equity and engagement (volunteers, leaders, and participation in CEC professional and scholarly activated, etc.) by identifying and eliminating barriers that exist
3. Provide education and programming to support special educators in serving diverse communities (Webinars, Synchronous Courses, Resources/Tools, Sessions at Conferences, etc.).

CEC has made a three-year commitment to this work and is identifying outcomes and deliverables for each project goal.

As individuals you can “take the pledge” making a personal commitment to address the goals of the diversity, equity, and inclusion. You can use this link to make a personal statement, or, to review the statements of your colleagues https://exceptionalchildren.org/project2020

As Pioneers we have signed on to support the CEC 20/20 goals and we are listed as Pledge Partners. Where are we now?

The work has just begun. Invitations for individual and group pledges were issued and several have been made. We have had one full group meeting to look at the overall goals of the project and one sub-group meeting (there is a sub-group for each of the goals). Pioneers is part of the Engagement Subgroup, goal 2, which is being led by Dr. Joy Banks. At this meeting, we had general discussions about the direction for enhancing engagement.

At Dr. Banks request, she and I will met to look at the groups strategies and work to develop some more specific ideas for direction as well as to reflect on historic approaches to these issues within CEC.

Our second meeting for the Engagement Group was held January 28th and we were able to clarify our objectives for engagement. These objectives are:

1. To Identify Barriers to professional engagement within CEC by establishing baseline data related to why special educators join, do not join, and why they become active in CEC
2. Increase diversity participation through our CEC (e.g. conference proposals, standards, committees, Board of Directors).
3. Review Publications (e.g. all journals, books, PD, webinars, etc.) to ensure inclusive and invitational through out the publication process (e.g. solicitation of manuscripts, reviews, and publication pipeline).
4. Increase CEC’s influence in support of diversity issues on funding agencies (e.g. federal and private) for research and practice.

I have requested to focus on the subcommittee for Objective #2.

Respectfully Submitted – Mary Ruth Coleman maryruth.coleman@unc.edu