Fellows Assist College on Diversity Initiatives

Two administrative fellows and one graduate assistant are spending the academic year in the Office of Student Life to implement College diversity initiatives.

The fellows, Kimberly A. Truong and Alicia Williams, were each hired through the Office of the Assistant to the President for Institutional Diversity and Equity, which offers a one-year fellowship program for professionals in higher education leadership. Brittany Vine, a graduate student at Merrimack College, is serving a joint fellowship with the OSL and Merrimack.

According to Emelyn A. dela Peña, assistant dean of student life for equity, diversity, and inclusion, Truong and Williams will help build the OSL’s diversity infrastructure in their year here through projects such as planning a spring conference on student research on diversity and researching support services for first-generation college students at peer institutions. The fellows will coordinate with other offices at the College, including the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, the Office of BGLTQ Student Life, and the Harvard College Women’s Center.

Last spring, administrators convened a working group to discuss issues of race and inclusion at the College, and that group, chaired by Pusey Minister Jonathan L. Walton, plans to present recommendations on College resource allocation to Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana sometime this academic year. Dela Peña, who staffs the committee, said she “would imagine that the fellows would be instrumental” in implementing any OSL projects that come out of the group’s recommendations this year.

—Staff writer Madeline R. Conway can be reached at mconway@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @MadelineRConway.