Penn State was named to the 2014 list of “Colleges and Universities Committed to Diversity” at the Minority Access Role Models Conference earlier this month.

One of 31 institutions on the list, Penn State’s inclusion was due to its institutional leadership’s commitment to diversity, along with its infrastructure for promoting inclusion, according to the release.

The university recently outlined seven diversity challenges in its diversity strategic plan entitled “A Framework to Foster Diversity at Penn State.” The plan includes dealing with diversity issues related to the Campus Climate, Representation (Access and Success), Education and Scholarship, and Institutional Viability and Vitality.

Penn State is home to three university-wide President’s Equity Commissions and was one of the first universities in the country to create a vice provost for Educational Equity. The university tragically lost former Vice Provost for Educational Equity recently, Terrell Jones, to cancer. Jones was in charge of implementing the majority of the programs for which Penn State was recognized, but Marcus Whitehurst, who is in the position in the interim, is in the process of creating a new diversity strategic plan for the university.

Penn State also received its second Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, making this the second such honor received by the university in the past month.

About the Author

Ted Hozza

Ted is a senior majoring in Community, the Environment, and Development, or as his friends here at Onward State like to call it, Architecture. You can probably find him at the Phyrst late at night with other Onward Staters if he's not somewhere else editing articles. You can follow him on Twitter @TedHozza or email him at ted@onwardstate.com.

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