While clarifying the College’s ongoing commitment to diversity and inclusion in all forms, the current reorganization also “responds to a variety of changes in personnel, involving new as well as important existing functions now housed in three separate offices, and addressing several key goals,� Hansen said in a July 23 message to students, faculty and staff.

“This is a special moment in time,â€� Hansen said. “ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is building on recent success in multicultural recruitment, greater fluency in all our discussions of diversity and much stronger intercultural competence across the curriculum and community.â€� This positive momentum has been driven by the combined efforts of numerous faculty and staff members, including those who have served in and supported the office of the Special Assistant to the President for Diversity and Inclusion as well as staff in Admission and the Dean of Students Office.

Dean of the Faculty Jill Reich said, “The range of issues and opportunities we face as faculty, staff and students requires a coordinated and collaborative approach across the College. I look forward to working with all toward the important goals the president has set for diversity, equity and inclusion in all aspects of our campus.�

Dean of Students Tedd Goundie said, “This new organization advances the mission of the College and builds upon the existing foundation of the good work across the College about diversity and inclusion. This restructuring positions this vital work in such a way that it is systemically woven into the fabric of the College, and it ensures all constituent voices are heard as we move forward to envision the role and mission of inter-cultural education at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in the year ahead.â€�

The major features of the reorganization are that:

• ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ will have an Office of Intercultural Education (OIE), headed by Roland Davis ’92 as Director and Associate Dean of Students. The office will work with all key campus leaders, including those noted above, to expand the work of the current Office of Multicultural Affairs and house the current Multicultural Center. A search will begin immediately to fill the Assistant Dean of Students position that Davis has held since 2002.

“Going forward, Roland Davis will collaborate with leaders across the entire ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College community in campuswide discussions focusing on the structure and priorities around diversity and intercultural education,â€� Hansen said. “Roland as the new Director of OIE is charged to work with all constituencies of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to refine and develop the full mission of the Office through broad community participation over its first year of operation. Above all, he is committed to creating a dynamic hub that engages, educates, and connects all members of the community, including students, student organizations, faculty, academic departments and programs, college offices and staff members, alumni, prospective students, and community members and organizations.â€�

• A new position, Manager of Equal Employment Opportunity Compliance, will be added to the Human Resources Offices, with Carmen Purdy as the first appointee to that position. In that capacity, Purdy will remain in charge of various functions previously housed in the Office of Equity and Diversity Resources, including meeting with staff and other College constituencies to advance an understanding and advocacy of intercultural understanding. That office was most recently headed by Camille Hazeur, who left ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ last year to accept a position in the U.S. Department of Transportation under the Obama administration.

Noting that Purdy “has been successfully executing many of the responsibilities of the Office of Equity and Diversity Resources� since Hazeur’s departure, Hansen wrote that, “Carmen will continue to do the work she has done so ably for the College, leading the compliance and training functions currently associated with the Office of Equity and Diversity Resources, and adding her expertise to the team that already provides guidance, policy review, oversight, and training in many aspects of employment policy and practice. She will also continue to work collaboratively with Leslie Hill, Special Assistant to the President, and she will lend her support to the new Office of Intercultural Education on diversity initiatives and training programs.�

President Hansen added, “Together with others, moreover, she will bring her considerable expertise to the development of a new Ombuds Program that revitalizes our current program and creates ample opportunities for members of the community to discuss and resolve workplace concerns.  Confidential assistance for members of the campus community will be available from Human Resources, from the Ombuds program, and/or from the current Employee Assistance program.�

• A Director of Legal Affairs and Risk Management will be hired to serve several functions, some of which were formerly handled by the Office of Equity and Diversity Resources and others of which were assigned to the position of Assistant Treasurer, which has been eliminated.

The College will seek a Director with experience in and commitment to providing oversight and collaboration on key equal opportunity employment issues, including the thorough investigation of any formal complaints of discrimination. Hansen said, “Having a member of the legal community handle our complaint investigations will ensure that all employees and students are given the full and expert consideration due them under the law, and according to our own policies, when filing a complaint.�

The President explained in her letter that the goals of this restructuring are:

• Advancing diversity and inclusion by means of a coordinated and collaborative leadership structure that serves all areas and constituents of the College and builds on recent progress made by the collective efforts of offices and individuals too numerous to list in full, ranging from the Special Assistant to the President for Diversity and Inclusion and the hard-working members of the faculty who have participated in the recruitment and success of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students to the dedicated staff members in the Offices of Diversity and Equity Resources, Admissions, and Dean of Students, among others.

• Ensuring that the Equal Employment Opportunity function (including compliance, training, expert complaint investigation, oversight, and guidance for best practice in various employment policies and procedures) is pervasively embedded in every department and program.

• Reviewing every open position to ensure that alignment of resources with priorities and mission in the most efficient, productive, and cost-effective way.

• Leading the College in an increasingly complex legal and regulatory climate.

“The new structure is a first step in promoting these goals,� Hansen wrote. “Its effectiveness in doing so depends entirely on the strategic thinking and exemplary execution of many of us going forward, supporting and working together with the leaders and professionals who will occupy the new or redesigned positions and offices.�

Davis has been appointed Director of the new Office of Intercultural Education and promoted to Associate Dean of Students. In her new position, Purdy is Manager of Equal Employment Opportunity Compliance. Both positions are effective immediately.

As a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ assistant dean of students since 2002, Davis’ broad range of responsibilities have included supporting all students with academic and personal issues and teaming with faculty and administrators to address the needs of students of color and low-income students.

“Roland had been deeply committed and involved in advancing diversity and inclusion at the College dating back to his student days at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½,” said Dean of Students Tedd Goundie. “And, given his experience as a dean working closely with students, coupled with his scholarly interest in matters of diversity and inclusion, Roland is uniquely suited to serve ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in this leadership role and collegewide collaboration.”

In 2004, he served on ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ six-member Committee for Diversity and Academic Excellence to address concerns of historically underrepresented populations at the College. In 2005, he co-facilitated a semester-long workshop for the College’s faculty and members of the staff and senior administration on issues around stereotype threat. Teaming with the College’s special assistant to the president for diversity, in 2006 he co-chaired a committee charged with evaluating the campus climate around diversity; with the special assistant, he helped implement successful strategies around the resulting Benjamin Mays Initiative, a broad program to achieve a more globally aware and diverse campus community and a more welcoming and supportive campus environment for students from under-represented racial, ethnic and socio-economic groups. Davis has advised the Mays Men, a student organization established to support and empower African American and Latino men on campus.

As chief judicial affairs officer for the Dean of Students Office, Davis has overseen investigations into allegations of student misconduct and the adjudication of substantiated claims through the Student Conduct Committee process. He has supervised the College’s contracted advocate for student victims of sexual assault.

Davis is a consultant and faculty member at the Stanley H. King Counseling Institute in North Andover, Mass., and Colorado Springs, Colo., where he conducts counseling workshops for independent-school educators at the middle- and upper-school levels. He also gives presentations to faculty and students at private secondary schools throughout the country on issues related to counseling, adolescent development, race, and the psychological issues of students of color. Davis also is a board member of the Center for Preventing Hate, based in Portland, Maine.

Davis returned to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 2002 after serving Dartmouth College as Assistant Dean of First-Year Students and Director of the Integrated Academic Support Program, and at Harvard College as a senior proctor and administrator in residence for five first-year residence halls. While at Harvard, he was also a clinical social work fellow at Harvard University Health Services.

Davis is a doctoral candidate in education at the University of New Hampshire, where his work has focused on issues of race and culture in higher education. His dissertation is a study of campus racial climate, stereotype threat, and how these factors affect academic motivation among African American students at predominantly white colleges.

Purdy has held numerous positions in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ administration since arriving in 1982. Most recently, she has been assistant director of the Office of Equity and Diversity Resources and, since the departure of that office’s director last fall, has been in charge of all of its duties. She served as coordinator of the predecessor office, the Office of Affirmative Action and Institutional Diversity, from 2006 to 2009.

Experienced in the recruitment and retention of College staff and faculty, Purdy’s duties include the review of employment notices and the oversight of interviews for faculty candidates and staff candidates for director level and above. She oversees records management for affirmative action purposes and oversees compliance with federal Equal Employment Opportunity regulations and other non-discrimination statutes.

Purdy works closely with the Office of Human Resources on training programs for faculty and staff, and in investigations of complaints concerning sexual and workplace harassment and areas relating to government compliance and discrimination.

She has worked with the College’s special assistant to the president for diversity to plan and implement diversity workshops and training for all staff and has served on numerous committees for diversity initiatives.

She has created and presented workshops on various topics, the latest titled “Walking on Eggshells” for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ employee enrichment week in June.

As assistant to the director of affirmative action from 1990 to 2006,  Purdy worked with College managers and supervisors to provide intra-office communications training and assisted in the planning, development and administration of training workshops for faculty, staff and students on diversity, multicultural issues and sexual harassment.

In 2004, Purdy lobbied for, founded and then supported the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Office Professionals Network to serve more than 70 clerical workers and to recognize the critical role and contributions of these dedicated ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ office assistants.

View slide show: 'We Can Relate'

Lisa D’Oyen ’09 of Kingston, Jamaica, holds her cell phone in one hand and two open boxes of Hostess crème-filled chocolate Zingers in the other. Standing beside a table lined with edible snacks, lubricated latex condoms, and fact cards, D’Oyen and her psychology classmates share information about HIV/AIDS with students heading to lunch. Their sound system broadcasts hip-hop as a Yale Divinity School recruiter also vies for student attention.

A standard Chase Hall tableau? Not today. This afternoon, D’Oyen stakes her ground in Manley College Center at Spelman College, the historically black women’s college in Atlanta, where she and Mbali Ndlovu ’09 of New York City are spending their fall semester.

Like any of the College’s myriad off-campus study offerings, the exchange program with Spelman and Morehouse hopes to offer students the right experience at the right time: during their junior year, when students are equipped to dig deeper into their intellectual, social, and emotional beings.

For D’Oyen and Ndlovu, part of this exploration will involve race, for at Spelman and Morehouse, the nation’s two premier historically black liberal arts colleges, “the courses and the context provide a sensitivity and awareness of racial issues that,” says Steve Sawyer, associate dean of students and director of off-campus study, “is impossible to replicate on a small New England campus — no matter how well-intentioned.”

As part of her pschology course, Lisa D'Oyen works at an HIV/AIDS awareness table in the college center at Spelman College, the historically black women's college in Atlanta.

Another overlay is gender. Spelman wants visiting students like D’Oyen and Ndlovu to leave the school with a “stronger sense of self, their place in the world, and what the Spelman ‘sisterhood’ is all about,” says Desiree Pedescleaux, who oversees the institution’s domestic exchange programs.

Ndlovu and D’Oyen get a sense of the sisterhood from “The Black Female Body in American Culture,” taught by M. Bahati Kuumba, associate professor of women’s studies. The professor discusses how the human body is a system of symbols and how, for black women in U.S. society, those symbols can suggest a political struggle.

After class, Ndlovu schedules an appointment with Kuumba, wanting the professor’s advice on designing a senior thesis topic for her ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ majors in African American and women and gender studies.

Everything about the professor resonates with the two young women. “She’s an activist. She’s been out there. And she’s very political,” D’Oyen says. True, there are political activists on the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty, she says, but at Spelman “we get the black perspective from black women. We can relate.”

“Like for the first time in my college career,” Ndlovu adds.

Mbali Ndlovu ’09 (left) and Lisa D’Oyen ’09, who studied at Spelman College during the fall, join Claudeny Obas ’09, who spent spring 2006 at Morehouse College, at the Benjamin E. Mays National Memorial at Morehouse. Mays graduated from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 1920.

One morning in late November, D’Oyen and Ndlovu head across the street to Morehouse to see the Benjamin E. Mays National Memorial. At once, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½-Morehouse connection seems real, though they’d heard about it all fall. “Every Morehouse student we met automatically knew what ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was,” Ndlovu says.

At the monument, the women are joined by Claudeny Obas ’09 of New York City, who’s in Atlanta visiting friends he made while studying at Morehouse in 2006.

Obas, a veteran of mostly white educational environments, talks about what might be gained from a semester at Morehouse, particularly by someone who’s never been in a minority situation — racial, sexual, religious, or other: “an understanding of what it’s like not having as many people to lean on in terms of your peers, and [having to go] outside of your comfort zone just to make the effort to reach people.”

For Obas, the semester started with getting “stuck in a room for two hours learning the school song,” he recalls, but the indoctrination into the Morehouse mystique paid off. “I felt I was joining a long line of prestige,” he says. Obas’ semester at Morehouse deepened his understanding that he “works better” in the multifaceted social milieu of an urban college. “I’ve always known that, but it was made much more apparent to me at Morehouse.”

He experienced one particularly glittering facet of Morehouse life thanks to Roland Davis ’92, assistant dean of students at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

Davis, whose father chairs the Morehouse board of trustees, said that if Obas was accepted for the Morehouse semester, Davis would get him tickets to the school’s “Candle in the Dark” gala.

And that February, Obas was indeed in black tie at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta to see famed photographer Gordon Parks and Tony Award–winner Geoffrey Holder receive their Candle awards for excellence in their fields. Obas also witnessed several Morehouse alums receive their “Bennie” awards for service, achievement, and trailblazing.

“It was quite the experience,” Obas says.

Photographs and text by Phyllis Graber Jensen

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Morehouse, Spelman

The connection between ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and the nation’s two premier historically black liberal arts colleges — Morehouse for men and Spelman for women — dates to 1940, the year Benjamin E. Mays ’20 began his 27-year Morehouse presidency.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½-Morehouse-Spelman Exchange Program was established in 1994, the centennial year of Mays’ birth. While the program has had modest student participation from both sides over the years, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is now focusing greater attention on this and similar initiatives, part of redoubled efforts to incorporate a wider spectrum of people, perspectives, and disciplines within the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ experience.