Our Commitment to Inclusive Excellence
Dear Manhattanville Community:
I hope you are finding time to enjoy nonwork-related activities with family and friends during these summer months.
The recent administrative reorganization and operational realignments have impacted several important functional units including, but not limited to, the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. I would like to take a moment to specifically address changes affecting this important area of work and high priority for the University.
For nearly two hundred years, Manhattanville has committed itself to serving community needs and, in particular, the underserved. This commitment has been reinforced over many decades and, today, is among our top priorities as a diverse, student-centered university. Indeed, our future success at Manhattanville will be shaped by our ability to create a student-ready, inclusive, and equitable learning experience.
After a year as president, I am convinced there are a variety of ways we can enhance our mission, student success, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. First, we must intentionally design our organization while optimizing the allocation of human and financial resources to realize our DEI priorities. Throughout my 30-year tenure serving ethnically and racially diverse collegiate populations, I’ve learned that resources must be well coordinated across the institution with a particular intention to be mission driven, success-focused and culturally relevant. This will require Manhattanville to frontload student support resources and eliminate duplicative and siloed efforts.
The recent restructuring called for organizational alignment of our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion operations with Academic and Student Affairs. This reorganization will allow Manhattanville to leverage the bulk of our institutional resources to support our DEI efforts and provide expanded support for our disadvantaged populations. By combining the Center for Inclusion with Student Affairs, I am confident we can amplify our diverse student supports while enhancing the campus coordination of our diverse student programming. Similarly, our Manhattanville Achievement Program (MAP), Mville First, and international student programming will now be under the auspices of Academic Affairs where significant resources are already designed to support student success, retention, and graduation. Finally, the important work of Title IX will be housed with Seann Kalagher, Chief of Staff, who has significant experience in this area.
There is strong evidence that student retention, particularly for first-generation and students of color, should be integrated into existing infrastructure for the best student outcomes. For me, it is a troubling disservice and inherently inequitable to our diverse student communities when institutions decouple and silo resources solely for racially and ethnically diverse students. In fact, Dr. Tia Brown McNair, our featured speaker at this past spring’s equity symposium, reinforced this notion by saying we should avoid the practice of “...giving resources to one community and not another.” Clearly, today’s diverse university campuses require integrated and systemic approaches designed to support student success while fostering inclusive excellence.
The administrative reorganization of our diversity efforts was not performance-based but instead, student outcomes and mission-based. I have come to believe that Manhattanville’s values for inclusive excellence cannot be the charge of one office or staff. Instead, I am convinced it is our collective responsibility with accountability falling squarely on executive leadership. To this end, we are developing executive equity plans for each Vice President, which I will be integrating into annual performance goals. These plans will ensure that our structure, operations, and priorities are purposefully designed to foster an inclusive and equitable community.
Like any organization experiencing change, communication to those impacted as well as the broader organization is important. In the coming weeks, I will be meeting with students, faculty, staff, and alumni to address questions, provide clarification, and receive feedback on the reorganization. I also intend to meet with our community in the fall to further address the larger reorganization and our vision forward. In fact, next year we will be refining our Strategic Plan to enhance our equity efforts. In the meantime, I invite our entire community to share with me your thoughts, suggestions, and ideas for my consideration.
My commitment to our values of inclusivity, equity, and community runs deep throughout my life experiences—personally and professionally. As we work toward excellence in serving our extraordinarily diverse students, Manhattanville University is poised to elevate this priority as a central tenet of our mission. Again, our success is dependent on it.
Thank you for your continued commitment, service, and support of Manhattanville University.
Always Forward. Always Valiant.
Yours in Education,
Frank D. Sánchez, PhD, President