Mount Holyoke College
PAE-8: Support Programs for Underrepresented Groups

Mount Holyoke hosts five cultural centers and has a religious/spiritual life center that actively supports nine different faith groups. Cultural Heritage Months and Awareness Weeks acknowledge, celebrate, and explore domestic and international racial, ethnic, and religious identities. Programming can range from lecturers, art exhibits, dialogues and more.

One of Mount Holyoke's goals is to continue to build and maintain its diverse faculty. MHC has been unusually successful in creating faculty diversity, although more so in some fields than others. MHC encourages ongoing efforts to address under-representation where it exists and to improve upon the satisfaction of faculty of color in its community. The Dean of Faculty's Office continues its membership in the Consortium for Faculty Diversity at Liberal Arts Colleges, and a rigorous commitment to encourage thorough, informed and multicultural sensitive search procedures and thoughtful outreach to excellent scholars of diverse backgrounds.

One of Mount Holyoke's goals is to increase efforts to recruit and retain a diverse staff. As a participant in a new Five Colleges initiative encouraged by our presidents, the diversity directors and human resource directors are working to develop a new shared position. The primary foci of this position will be to build knowledge and relationships with various community groups; create awareness of the colleges as employers; and to be a source for potential candidates for select positions.  Human Resources staff from each college will be engaged in the community outreach activities with the new position strategically managing that effort.   In addition, Mount Holyoke has also been an active participant in the Five Colleges Intergroup Dialogue Initiative. This program has been important in building the competence and confidence of individuals to communicate and build relationships across dimensions of difference. Thus, it has helped create a climate on campus that feels increasingly welcoming to all, including a direct impact on the retention of our staff of color.