Last Tuesday, Oct. 18, the President’s Committee on Diversity Affairs (PCDA) closed its roster selection for new members.
The PCDA set the goal of promoting diversity within the Lawrence community and curriculum, thereby encouraging a more inclusive campus community.
“Diversity brings us into contact with different experiences and perspectives, helping us to question our beliefs and assumptions,” their mission statement states. The PCDA defines an inclusive community as “one that welcomes people of all backgrounds, experiences and identities (or expressions of identity)” and deems it a quintessential component of a liberal arts education.
In an inclusion-centric agenda, the committee has vowed to “promote faculty and staff engagement in the recruitment, selection and retention of historically underrepresented students, faculty and staff”; “identify opportunities to integrate attention to diversity into academic and co-curricular programs”; and “raise awareness of the inequity and challenges faced by historically marginalized groups at Lawrence, in the Appleton area, in the U.S. and globally,” among other motives.
Membership is comprised of five faculty members, one from each division and one at large, including one tenured faculty member serving as chair, the Associate Dean of the Faculty, the Assistant Dean of Students for Multicultural Affairs and one representative from the office of the Vice President for Student Affairs.
Also included in the committee is the Director of Human Resources, one representative from the office of the Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid and two student representatives from the Lawrence University Community Council Committee on Diversity Affairs. Other members of the campus community are to be selected on a situational basis to tackle specific issues.
The 2016-17 PCDA appointments have been made as follows:
• Kimberly Barrett (chair)
• Christyn Abaray
• Rochelle Blindauer
• Carla Daughtry
• Kimberly Dickson
• José Encarnación
• Alison Guenther-Pal
• Karen Hoffmann
• Nauman Khan
• Curt Lauderdale
• Guilberly Louissaint
• Monita Mohammadian Gray
• Linda Morgan-Clement
• Pa Lee Moua
• Najma Osman
• Paris Wicker
• A.J. Williams
With a new approach to diversification, the committee hopes to furnish other facets of diversity and inclusion, such as a campus demographic reflective of the U.S. and a globalized world, an environment conducive to attracting and retaining students, faculty and staff of historically underrepresented groups, and a curriculum that considers diversity and its implications for contemporary life amongst many others.