Case Western Reserve University received the 2013 Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) award from Insight Into Diversity magazine, a national honor recognizing colleges and universities that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion.
It marks the second straight year Case Western Reserve has won the award, which measures an institution’s achievement and commitment to diversity and inclusion on campus through initiatives, programs and outreach, student recruitment, retention and completion, and faculty and staff hiring practices.
The university will be featured with 55 other recipients in the magazine’s November issue.
“Diversity work in higher education requires collaboration and strategic engagement with multiple stakeholders and constituencies throughout the campus community on a regular basis,” said Marilyn Sanders Mobley, vice president for Inclusion Diversity and Equal Opportunity—a cabinet-level position university President Barbara R. Snyder created in 2008 to foster diversity and inclusiveness campus-wide.
Now in its third year, the university’s award-winning Train the Champion program recently added a new component—a trip to the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood, to encourage staff and faculty to take a deeper dive into religious, ethnic and cultural diversity, and to introduce participants to the social justice aspect of the museum’s work in the community.
Under the auspices of the Faculty Diversity Office, the university requires all faculty search committees to receive training in how to interrupt unconscious bias. And, to enhance diversity and acceptance throughout campus, the university hosts two annual receptions for underrepresented students, faculty and staff—a welcome gathering at the beginning of the academic year and a graduation reception at the end.
The university’s Power of Diversity series, which involves Case Western Reserve faculty and prominent guest speakers, has added a new feature—Viewpoint Forum—to provide dialogue on controversial issues from divergent viewpoints.
As a member of the Commission on Inclusion, under the auspices of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, Case Western Reserve was recognized in the spring of 2013 with a Best-in-Class Award for Workforce Diversity for the third straight year, and inducted into the commission’s Hall of Fame.
“This work is robust, nuanced and complex at a decentralized research university such as ours,” Mobley said. “We believe we are making incremental progress across the board and even transformative cultural change in some areas, but we are committed to doing even more.”
For more information about the HEED award, visit insightintodiversity.com.