Chatham's Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Dear Students, Faculty & Staff,

While our country has been confronting the twin challenges of a global pandemic and structural racism since we moved to virtual operations last Spring, we have been hard at work planning for welcoming Chatham’s community of students, staff, and faculty back in the Fall in ways that address the twin imperatives of mitigating COVID-19 and building a more just and inclusive society.

The plans we’ve been developing build on a series of efforts Chatham has implemented over the last four years, led by the Diversity Inclusion Council and our recently formed Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.

These efforts include creation of faculty, staff, and student trainings; commitment to using more inclusive contextual materials and readings in the classroom; development of new practices to foster more diverse candidate pools for faculty and staff hiring; building and expanding the Intergroup Dialogues Program; focusing on improving the graduation rates for students of color; policy revisions; new recognition ceremonies at graduation; and the creation of a new Chatham tradition – a day of professional development and community engagement devoted to Diversity & Inclusion that, unfortunately, had to move to being virtual last Spring when the rest of the University closed down because of COVID-19.  We also have continued our collaborations with the Multifaith Council and training efforts on religious/non-religious identities, as well as trans and nonbinary identification.

While these and other efforts have helped us make progress strive to live up to Chatham’s core value of Diversity & Inclusion, we recognize that Chatham, like our nation, still has a great deal of work to do in helping to build a more just and inclusive society. 

At Chatham, this includes taking steps to attract a more diverse pool of students and faculty, improving the hiring and retention of faculty of color, and creating an environment where individuals from all backgrounds feel fully welcomed and respected.  Therefore, our ongoing initiatives will expand this coming school year to include:

• Required training in areas of anti-racism and implicit bias;

• Listening sessions that we will conduct with students, staff, and faculty to identify other issues that need to be addressed; and

• A strategic planning process to gather input from the listening sessions to ensure the feedback is translated into action.

We value and appreciate the suggestions we have received on ways to continue and improve these and other efforts. We also appreciate and value your willingness to become engaged and work with us to move forward and improve our community for all. 

Until we can welcome everyone back to campus in person, we wish you a safe, happy and restorative remainder of the Summer.

All the best,

David Finegold      Dean Darlene Motley & Dr. Randi Congleton
President, Chatham University               Co-Chairs of the Diversity Inclusion Council