Mission of the Office
The Office for Institutional Equity and Belonging (OIEB) is an integral part of Wheaton’s pursuit of excellence. Enabling the college to fulfill its mission to provide a transformative liberal arts education, OIEB 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 two-fold: to foster decolonized learning and to advance cross-campus initiatives to produce bold, equity-driven outcomes. It does so by generating and disseminating evidence-based tools, initiatives, and frameworks. Above all, OIEB 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.
“Equity, diversity, and inclusion 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
Invitation for community input
The Office of Institutional Equity and Belonging 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 newly created division houses the following departments:
The Marshall Center for Intercultural
-
- Intercultural Early Arrival Program
- Cultivating Leaders in Action
Center for Social Justice and Community Impact
- Community Service
- LGBTQ+ Engagement
- 1stGeneration & Low-Income Engagement
- Wheaton Pantry
Center for Religious and Spiritual Life
-
- Interfaith Programs and Resources
- Meditation Room
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.
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!
Luis F. Paredes, Ph.D.
Associate Vice President for Institutional Equity and Belonging
Office of Institutional Equity and Belonging
Park Hall 107
Email: [email protected]
We are revamping our websites, and later in the semester, we will release our new OIEB website.
Wheaton’s Equity Model
One of the first things that the Office for Institutional Equity and Belonging did was to outline this iterative model that shows the college’s path to achieving its DEIB goals.
- Institutional Investment and Commitment
- Shared Vision, Tools, and Goals
- Collecting and Learning from the Data
- Attention to Barriers and Disparities
- Personal and Departmental Accountability
- Revisiting System, Policies, and Processes
- Continual Capacity Building
- Celebrating Clear Points of Progress
DEAL
Our Diversity, Equity and Access Leadership (DEAL) group strives to create opportunities for innovative diversity work to ensure that Wheaton consistently provides a diverse, inclusive, equitable, and accessible learning community.
Vision & Mission
The DEI Vision and Mission Statement provides a framework and an anchor for our campus to guide our work as we continually outline new action steps and refresh our Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan going forward.
Equity Ecosystem
Driving our commitment to equity and belonging is an ecosystem of professionally staffed initiatives and offices that work in tandem to maximize our ability to create an inclusive living, learning, and working environment for students.
Institutional collaborations
DEAL
Our Diversity, Equity and Access Leadership (DEAL) group strives to create opportunities for innovative diversity work to ensure that Wheaton consistently provides a diverse, inclusive, equitable, and accessible learning community.
LGBTQ+ Network
Our Network for LGBTQ+ Inclusion, Support, and Advocacy is a group of dedicated faculty and staff members working to enhance the social, emotional, and academic lives of LGBTQ+ students.
First-Generation Advisory Committee
Our First-Generation Advisory Committee is working to establish Wheaton as a premier destination for talented first-generation and low-income students (FGLI) to excel.