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Home > Featured Stories > Embracing Diversity > October 2008 > NC State Lauded for Diversity EffortsUniversity Lauded for Diversity Initiatives
It's great for the university, and it's really paying off in terms of people believing that NC State is a campus where they can come, feel welcomed and feel included.
José Picart, vice provost for diversity and African-American affairs at NC State
Helping prepare students to work and live in a diverse and international community is essential to NC State's core mission.
By Dave Pond, Web Communication
A string of successful, university-wide diversity initiatives has led to NC State being recognized as one of the nation's Top Diversity Institutions.
In late September, the 501c3 nonprofit organization Minority Access honored 39 colleges and universities with the designation in recognition of their commitment to diversity on campus.
"NC State is proud to be honored as a Top Diversity Institution," Chancellor James Oblinger said. "As 'the people's university,' NC State is an institution that embraces and values diversity of people and of ideas.
"Our varied experiences, cultures, backgrounds and beliefs add intellectual richness to our campus community," he said. "Diversity, inclusiveness and mutual respect among our NC State community is imperative to furthering our mission."
This is the second consecutive year that NC State has received accolades from Minority Access – in 2007, the university was named a Role Model Institution for its implementation of a pipeline strategy to encourage minority students to enter the professoriate.
"We're on track, and we're making progress," said José Picart, vice provost for diversity and African-American affairs at NC State. "However, this is not a recognition of our office, but is a testament to what is going on across the campus in the colleges, in our campus units and centers as well as to the positive interaction between our students, faculty and staff.
"It's a validation of an extraordinary amount of cooperation and collaboration that has taken place for years, which helps create an inclusive environment in which anyone can come, will feel welcome and will be able to succeed."
The positive steps taking place on campus today would not have been possible without the groundbreaking work done by NC State's past leaders, including former chancellors, former provost Larry Clark and Gus Witherspoon - the university's inaugural facilitator of African American affairs.
"When you look back through the course of human history, there are always individuals who stand out in terms of making a real difference," Picart said. "They worked hard, laying the groundwork for a diversity infrastructure that I feel is one of the best in the country."
In recent years, NC State leaders have continued to forge ahead in hopes of fully integrating the concept of diversity into the mission of the university. A Many of NC State's programs are rooted in the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2003 decision that universities have a compelling interest to promote diversity in order to enhance the educational and developmental experiences of their students.
"The Court was persuaded by some very robust and compelling evidence that diversity enhances the academic and social development of students," Picart said. "We want to take that information and show our campus leaders that through diversity initiatives, we are able to better prepare our students not only academically but for the global workplace as well."
The university recently incorporated a diversity and global-knowledge requirement into its general education program and earlier this year, NC State opened a new GLBT Center to serve as both an educational and support system for people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.
A new GI Bill (signed by President Bush in June) lead to an increase the number of armed-forces veterans on campus, and Picart wants to ensure that NC State is ready to meet the needs - and welcome – those members of our country's fighting forces.
"The new bill has presented us with an outstanding opportunity and a unique challenge," he said. "We're currently putting together a group that's made up not only of NC State leaders but student veterans and representatives from the Veterans Administration as well, to discuss how NC State can better serve military veterans."
Also in the coming months, Picart's office hopes to begin implementing the recommendations of a Latino/Hispanic Task Force and explore creating an American Indian Education Summit to better serve those people groups.
Throughout the NC State community, there's plenty of outstanding work being done. Articles and advertisements in The Chronicle of Higher Education and related publications have highlighted a number of these initiatives, where potential future students and high-school counselors have taken note.
"We've seen that people pay a lot of attention to the fact that institutions are honored and recognized by outside agencies like Minority Access," Picart said. "Our recruiters are hearing from prospective students that they've seen where we've been recognized as a role model institution for our diversity efforts, and they are making comments about it.
"It's great for the university, and it's really paying off in terms of people believing that NC State is a campus where they can come, feel welcomed and feel included."
