Whether you’re a prospective student, current student, a proud Monmouth graduate, faculty or staff member, or a member of the larger Monmouth community: regardless of your race, sexual orientation, gender, country of origin, or degree of physical ableness, you have a home here.
Because it’s your home, our goal is to make you feel safe and welcome. We vow to listen and take action when you need us. We will not tolerate intolerance in any shape or whenever or however it appears. We see you and we stand with you.
And we expect that strength to be honored, nourished and respected. We encourage tough conversations grounded in compassion and understanding. We’ll make sure your voice is never silenced. We encourage you to use your voice and seek new ways to let it be heard.
A proud history, with work to do
When Monmouth was founded, our early leaders made the decision to admit women and students of color. We are proud our founders took that stand. We seek to learn from their example, to continue to make just decisions, to stand up and speak out when circumstances demand we do so. Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
The Monmouth of today is more diverse than you might think, especially for a midsize town in the Midwest – 35 percent of our students are American minorities and international students. We’re proud that our students from different backgrounds make a home here, and we actively seek ways to support them. Our work is far from done. We are listening and learning along the way.
Our Charge
The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Working Group embodies the Monmouth College commitment to a welcoming, inclusive, and equitable environment for all members of our community. By researching best practices and making individual and institutional recommendations, it gathers the voices of our College and turns them into action.
We are committed to enhancing diversity, equity and inclusion at Monmouth College. This Diversity, Equity and Inclusion plan reflects our dedication, our aspirations and our desire to create an environment where all individuals experience a strong sense of belonging and have an equal opportunity to succeed.
As a result of strategic planning, the DEI working group will focus on the following strategies:
We will create an inclusive and equitable campus climate by engaging in campus-wide dialogues about diversity, with attention to life experience as well as marginalized identities (race/ethnicity/nationality, sex and gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, ability, age cohort) and justice.
We will offer employees professional development opportunities to increase awareness of differences and enhance cross cultural/relational skills.
We will develop and rollout a diversity and inclusion competency training program that uses the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI. LLC) framework for students, faculty, and staff.
We will identify physical spaces utilized for affinity group gatherings and affinity group educational purposes.
We will focus on improving faculty and staff recruitment and strengthen retention of employees from underrepresented communities.
We will implement effective recruitment and retention practices for Trustees and Alumni Board members from underrepresented communities.
We will continue to focus on recruiting a diverse student body. We will work to increase the retention rate of historically excluded and currently underrepresented and international students. We will work to achieve equal retention and graduation rates for all demographic groups.
We will engage alumni to create affinity groups designed to invest in the education and personal growth of historically excluded and currently underrepresented students.
We will resource faculty and support course development as the College implements the “Community Engagement,” “Identity, Diversity, and Equity,” “Global Learning” and “Languages and Cultures” requirements in the new Core Curriculum (2022).
We will collaborate with partners across campus to resource faculty and staff in pedagogies that promote justice and equity.
We will support and promote program curricula that study issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
We will identify and assess financial and human resources that support DEI infrastructure and initiatives and make recommendations to strengthen these resources.
We will seek and allocate resources to offer additional funded financial aid with the goal of increasing enrollment of students from historically underrepresented communities.
We commit to effective use and/or display of donor gifts for diversity throughout the campus community.
