Being Diverse Isn’t Enough – CHERE Higher Ed Series to Begin

The Center for Higher Education Retention Excellence (CHERE) is sponsoring a three-conference series examining obstacles to success for various demographic groups, and key strategies and innovative practices to improve the likelihood of student success in higher education.

The first of the series, Being Diverse Isn’t Enough: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Action, will be held on Friday, June 22 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the University of Hartford in West Hartford. The following sessions will be Success for Women, to be held on Sept. 20 at the University of Saint Joseph, presented in partnership with the Aurora Women and Girls Foundation, and Success for Men and Other Groups, on Nov. 9 at Gateway Community College in New Haven.

The June 22 program will consider how to support under-represented, first generation, minority and otherwise challenged students, and to help all students benefit from a diverse campus community. In addition to workshops and panel discussions, speakers will include:

• Bo-Edward Lawrence, 2017 Graduate of University of Hartford, “Unlocking the Secret Society”
• DeLois Lindsay, recently retired from University of Hartford as Vice President for Student Development

Topics will include high school to college transition, sustaining success in the first year and supporting student identity without building silos. Discussions will lead to practical solutions and implementable initiatives around academic, social and financial supports.

A student will keynote these challenges, and a skilled expert will put those comments in context. Following, a panel of students and professionals will look deeper into these challenges, based on their own experience, and engage in dialogue with other attendees.

“Colleges and universities seek to nurture diversity, but also provide opportunities for like-minded people to be together; so what’s needed for healthy, respectful campuses is a fine balance between diversity and inclusion,” said David Johnston, Director of CHERE.

At the conclusion of the conference, there will be a meeting of the Northeast Consortium for College Success, created by CHERE recently to bring together higher education professionals from throughout the Northeast to discuss key issues facing challenged students.

Female students face many of the same obstacles to completing their college degrees as their male counterparts. The September 20 CHERE conference, at the University of Saint Joseph, will consider how low-income and minority women experience gender as an obstacle to successfully moving through higher education and beyond, including the implications of and thoughtful attention to sexual harassment and assault.

The wrap-up conference, November 9 at Gateway Community College in New Haven, is centered on the reality that all students face obstacles to college success, often very different ones for students of different backgrounds, including the challenges facing men both accessing and succeeding in higher education. The conference will look at ways that schools and colleges are addressing these challenges and highlight innovative practices that have been proven to work.

The mission of CHERE is to “understand and improve policies and practices for challenged students that lead to higher college retention, from the summer after high school graduation, through the first year, to graduation, and to employment.”

Since its founding in 2012, CHERE has conducted nearly 20 conferences hosted by educational institutions throughout Connecticut, focusing on a range of critical and cutting-edge issues facing higher education in Connecticut and nationwide.

For more information or to register for the conference, please call David Johnston, at (203) 640-6201, email him at educationRwe@gmail.com, or visit www.thechere.org.

Co-sponsors of the June 22 conference include the University of Hartford and the Hartford Consortium for Higher Education. CHERE is a program of the Hartford Consortium for Higher Education.