NC State receives the HEED award, third year in a row

This year, NC State was named one of the 96 universities to receive the Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award in recognition of its commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion on campus.

The award is sponsored by Insight magazine, a publication that discusses diversity in higher education. The HEED award is a national recognition, and this will be the third time NC State has received the award.

Sheri Schwab, the interim vice provost for institutional equity and diversity at NC State, spoke on the importance of the award, and how it will help NC State to recognize what areas they are doing well in for diversity and what areas need more work.

“We are proud of the award, but we are always striving to do better and do more,” Schwab said. “We are looking to implement more successful, impactful programs for diversity and inclusion at NC State. It gives us a way to recognize the positive things we are doing, and helps give us a framework to see what other best practices are out there.”

For the award, Insight magazine looks at a variety of aspects related to diversity. The award is not only based on student enrollment and graduation numbers of underrepresented groups, but faculty and staff representativeness along with initiatives implemented on campus.

Beverly Williams, the director of training and education for OIED, described a variety of initiatives that have been put in place to recruit diverse faculty, which is a major focus of the university.

“Building Future Faculty Program that invites scholars from all over the United States to talk about instead of going into industry, but going into education,” Williams said. “You see programs and speakers coming in, and that is just a portion of it. There are many strategies related to recruitment and inclusion.”

One of the initiatives NC State has to help promote diversity on campus is awarding mini grants to help execute diversity-related programming.

“Every year we offer the opportunity for people on campus to apply for some funding, up to $3,000, so that they can execute diversity-related programming,” Schwab said. “The fact that the common reading this year is ‘$2 A Day: [Living on Almost Nothing in America]’ came out of a mini grant. The goal was to bring attention to those with limited resources and in hunger and poverty in the United States. To me that is a shining example of a unique program that has come out of the mini grants.”

Other examples of initiatives that have come out of the mini grants are those such as the Black Male Initiative, which focuses on providing black males in their undergraduate years support and resources to help them graduate.

While NC State is proud to have received the award, Williams emphasizes that there are no plans to stop improving, and the office will continue adding to diversity and inclusion programs.

“This is not to say that we don’t have things to work on, still,” Williams said. “There were certain areas where we couldn’t check the box, but this allowed us to see areas we can improve.”

For more information on diversity training, policies, resources and upcoming events, can be found on the OIED website.