Today we met with the diversity council and had a 
chance to focus very specifically on issues of 
diversity and access and inclusion and how they 
relate to our core educational mission. So, we had 
a pretty wide ranging conversation today about 
some of the challenges that we face when we think 
about diversity and inclusion at JMU. One of the 
issues was, for example, we talked about was the 
criteria for hiring and tenure and promotion of 
faculty or for hiring of staff and making sure that 
those criteria reflect our values and the skills that 
we really need in the twenty-first century. So, faculty 
who know how to work with diverse students. Those 
are things we value and need at JMU. We also talked 
about the student experience at JMU when you come 
from an under-represented background where there 
may be a tendency to stay in pockets, if you will, of 
groups that are historically under-represented in part 
because it's really challenging to walk into an 
environment like this and feel like you're just different 
from everybody else. So that's something we clearly 
need to work on, to make sure that students feel 
welcome, that they feel that can be a part of all the 
activities across campus, and that we can be very 
intentional about how we bring people together across 
different racial and ethnic and gender and other lines 
to interact with each other in meaningful ways. That's 
a responsibility that we have if we are going to be a 
truly inclusive community. What I have learned over the 
years is just how important it is for us to recognize how 
diversity and excellence go hand-in-hand, how they fit 
together and reinforce one another. That, in fact, 
students and faculty and staff will learn more when they're 
in a richly diverse environment. We want to make sure 
that we provide a welcoming environment so that people 
of all backgrounds feel that they can come here, they can 
be successful, they can have a great career whether as a 
student or as a faculty or staff member and that's our goal.
