Mosaic
President’s Remarks
By President Barbara K. Altmann, Ph.D.
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Community and Belonging: The Breadth and Depth of DEI Work
By Gretchel Hathaway, Vice President for Community and Belonging
When my son, Dr. Stephen Tyson Jr., attended F&M from 2003 to 2007, we would often discuss the fun times, challenges, and accomplishments he was experiencing. Although there was not a large number of Black and Brown students on campus at the time, there were still a number of race-based incidents on and off campus during those years, which directly affected my son and his peers.
The students felt they needed more support so to empower themselves, they established two student organizations — IMPACT in 2004 and SISTERS in 2005. Stephen is one of IMPACT’s “originators” (a founding member) and served as the club’s second president. To this day, IMPACT and SISTERS help to raise the voices of the minoritized students on campus through providing community events and leadership opportunities for Black and Brown students at F&M.
Ten years after Stephen graduated, F&M’s administration made a bold decision that would alter every inch of the institution. The demographics and nature of young people in the United States and globally were shifting, and F&M wanted to be a leader in crafting a more diverse higher education landscape. The degree of consensus from the board of trustees, faculty, staff, and students around this decision was remarkable. The board decided to change the nature of its spending and increase resources toward financial aid. This decision acknowledged the breadth of the work that needed to be done on this campus to increase the diversity of the student body.
Then-President Daniel R. Porterfield spent his presidency (2011-2017) fine-tuning a talent strategy to recruit, support, educate, and launch top achievers from all income groups and zip codes: the “Next Generation Initiative.” Faculty and staff knew that these changes would propel F&M into the national conversation about college access, democracy, and the liberal arts, and they set to work creating the support systems and personnel that would best serve a more diverse student body.
But a focus on diversity absent an effort to enhance the campus climate would directly impact students and employees who wanted and needed to feel as if they belonged and that their voices would be heard in this environment. The breadth of the work to diversify the campus without the depth of the vision to include: belonging, accessibility, equity and inclusion is a setup for exclusionary practices and systemic bias to continue flourishing. F&M’s path to diversifying its student body and employee base and intentionally incorporating equity, inclusion, and accessibility into the very fabric of the college to achieve successful academic excellence was crystallized under the leadership of President Barbara Altmann, Ph.D.
President Altmann arrived in 2018, bringing with her a vision that “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is everyone’s job at F&M.” She established a senior leadership position with a support staff and a budget to begin meaningful and sustainable work on increasing equity, accessibility, and inclusion on this campus. She has encouraged us to lean into our legacy as bridge-builders and problem-solvers with the adaptation and embracing of the phrase, “The World Needs Diplomats.” This theme is relevant and prevalent in our 2021 Strategic Plan, as we embrace the core concepts of Viability, Vitality, Visibility at F&M.
As the campus moves to enhance the work of diversity, equity and inclusion, we have now expanded and embraced the concepts of building community and belonging. We are offering a wider and deeper understanding of the work it takes to ensure our diplomats meet the world with skills needed to lead with empathy and understand the importance of appreciating and respecting others, cultures, spiritual beliefs, genders, etc. They will be better equipped to handle challenging conversations, think critically, while learning and teaching new found concepts and worldviews. By learning new ways to interact and community with others, we will expand the breadth and depth of knowledge of our students and our campus community.
In this publication, we invite you to review just a few of the major institutional milestones that we have achieved in the past five years. We know there is more work to be done, as we continue to build on this work as we look to the future we will meet the challenges of local, national and global issues and how they will impact our community here at Franklin & Marshall College.
Meet the Team
Christian Perry, MBA, Director of Campus Community & Belonging
Diosanny Rivera-Placido, Director of the Women’s, Gender, & Sexualities Resource Center
Joe Pritchett, Ph.D., Director of Faith & Meaning
Jorge Mena-Ali, Ph.D., Assistant Dean of Faculty Diversity Initiatives, House Don for Roschel College, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology
Rachel Singer, Director of The Klehr Center for Jewish Life
Renee Rubey, Assistant Director of The Klehr Center for Jewish Life
DEI: A Pillar of the F&M Strategic Plan
F&M’s leadership and community understands the importance of intentionally addressing and educating the campus on the impact of having a diverse community that thrives and leans into challenging discussions. F&M’s Strategic Plan, “Leveraging Excellence, Accelerating Discovery,” begins by noting that “Franklin & Marshall inspires in students of high promise and diverse backgrounds an enduring love for learning, and prepares them for lives of success and fulfillment.” DEI is one of the five key pillars of this plan. The stated goal is to intentionally center diversity, equity and inclusion as institutional values in order to “transform our culture to create a safe, welcoming, and equitable community in which all students, employees, and alumni will feel a sense of belonging and be heard.”
Through the efforts of the Office of Community and Belonging and dedicated members of the F&M community, diversity, equity and inclusion are now embedded in F&M’s institutional DNA. This work has taken place while the community faced innumerable challenges, including a global pandemic and many global issues that impact the lives of students and the broader campus community. F&M understands that the hard work of making the campus a diverse, equitable, and inclusive place is never over. At the same time, it is proud of the work that it has done in the past five years to reach critical DEI milestones.
A Foundation for Belonging
These dedicated resources form the foundation of F&M’s efforts to build a sense of belonging among all of its community members.
Building Equity: Projects & Initiatives
Creating and fostering a culture of belonging relies on a commitment to breaking new ground. Here are a few of the innovative projects and initiatives launched at F&M in the last half-decade.
A special thank you to the following F&M folks who made this report possible:
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- Barbara Altmann, President, Franklin and Marshall College
- Chris Alexander, Director of Institutional Research
- Luke DeBord, Lead Graphic Designer, Office of Communications
- Jason Klinger, Assistant VP for Marketing, Content and Creative, Communication Office.
- Stephanie McNulty, The Honorable & Mrs. John C. Kunkel Professor of Government, Faculty Government Department.
- Jorge Mena-Ali, Assistant Dean of Faculty Diversity Initiatives, Don of Roschel College House, Faculty Biology Department.
- Lindsay Marino, Director of the Phillips Museum of Art at F&M
- Sue Mennicke, Associate Dean of International Initiatives
- Lindsey Palumbo, Data Analytic Specialist, Office of VP for Planning
- Christian Perry, Director of Campus Community & Belonging, Posse Liaison (New York & Florida)
- Joseph Pritchett, Director of Faith & Meaning
- Dr. Kerry Sherin Wright, Director, Philadelphia Alumni Writers House and Senior Teaching Professor of English
- Rachel Singer, Director of The Klehr Center for Jewish Life