The Office for Inclusive Excellence and Community Engagement (OIECE) is an integral part of Wheaton’s pursuit of holistic student success. Enabling the college to fulfill its mission to provide a transformative liberal arts and sciences education, OIECE and its campus partners strengthen Wheaton’s capacity to envision and achieve a radically imaginative understanding of engagement, affirmation and belonging in our community.

The Office’s role is to increase the opportunities for collaboration and coordination in planning and delivering programs and services available to all students, and to offer a more accessible framework for intercultural learning, social justice, spiritual development and global citizenship. It does so by generating and disseminating evidence-based tools, initiatives and frameworks. Above all, OIECE engages campus constituents and governance committees to anchor social justice, champion diversity, and weave equity and universal design into the operating norms of our college—our organizational practices, policies and culture.

“Inclusive excellence cannot be achieved just by taking a workshop, creating a list of action items, and attending a course—although all of these are important.  What is essential is making a lifelong commitment, as an individual and an institution, to learning about structural inequities in the past and the present, to listening with empathy, and then to mending, to repairing the world, tikkun olam in Hebrew.”

~ President Michaele Whelan

Student Support

The Office of Inclusive Excellence and Community Engagement provides equity-minded approaches to ensure best practices are shared throughout the community. We implement data-informed programs and initiatives to improve the welcoming environment and climate to guarantee the success of our students from diverse backgrounds.

The division houses the following departments:

The Marshall Center

    • Civic Engagement
    • First Generation Student Support
    • Leadership and Involvement
    • LGBTQ+ Engagement
    • Programs and Services
    • Religious and Spiritual Life
    • Wheaton Pantry

DEAL: Diversity, Equity & Access Leadership

    • Education and Programming Committee
    • Senate Committee
    • Strategic Planning and Accountability Committee

Throughout our services and programs, we offer opportunities for professional growth, education to implement wise practice skills, assessment, interventions and action planning to support the needs of all members of our community:

  • We develop strategies for leading and implementing equity-minded practices to support student success.
  • We work to increase diverse student, faculty and staff recruitment and retention.
  • We equip our community by increasing sensitivity and awareness of diverse lives while building respect and acceptance for multiple diversities of identity.

The Center for Global Education

  • International Student Services
  • Off-Campus Study in the U.S.
  • Opportunities for Faculty
  • Study Abroad
  • WheaGo Global
  • Wheaton in Bhutan

We firmly believe that solid relationships and networking support the success of our community. The key to practical efforts is aligning resources supporting the college’s goals and priorities.

Visit any center to learn more about our resources or attend our programs throughout the academic year. We welcome your suggestions!

Contact

Luis F. Paredes, Ph.D.
Associate Vice President for Inclusive Excellence and Community Engagement
508-286-3482
[email protected]