Wooster is committed to creating a welcoming, equitable, and inclusive campus for all members of our diverse and international community.
Students learn best when they study in a community that spans a wide range of experiences, traditions, identities, perspectives, and beliefs. Such diversity is necessary to fully realize our educational purpose, and we actively seek to increase it. Wooster students, staff and faculty come from all over the world, and from rural, urban, and suburban communities across the US.
A longstanding commitment
Wooster’s commitment to an inclusive learning environment started with our founding president, Willis Lord. At his inaugural address in 1866, he said:
“[This institution] should be not only a place of all studies; it should be a place of studies for all…. The essential test of citizenship in the commonwealth of science and letters should be character, mental and moral quality, and attainment, not condition, race, color, or sex.”
With more than 150 years of dedication to these principles, we know that realizing them requires determination and continuous action. In a world where opportunity is not distributed equally, creating a diverse, equitable, welcoming and inclusive campus community must be a top priority. Students, faculty, and staff of all races, ethnicities, nationalities, faiths, sexual orientations, gender identities, and socioeconomic circumstances are welcome at Wooster, and we are committed to ensuring equitable opportunities for each of them to learn, work, and thrive.
Central to our mission
Developing all students’ capacities for global engagement and their understanding of diversity and social justice is central to realizing our mission, and so they form part of our curricular requirements, our core values and our graduate qualities.
The Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) is a student-focused space that empowers and engages the Wooster community by promoting these core values and graduate qualities in many ways, inside and outside the classroom.
CDI is comprised of four “branches” and they include:
- Religious & Spiritual Life
- International Student Services
- Multicultural Student Affairs
- Sexuality & Gender Inclusion
The Office for Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity is home to the Vice President for EID and works on campus wide initiatives to promote the Institution’s DEI Strategic Plan. To contact the Office of Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity, please reach out to eid@wooster.edu.
Center for Diversity and Inclusion and Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Staff
Erin Guzmán
Henry J. Copeland Interfaith Chaplain and Director of Religious & Spiritual Life
Lin Hillis
Vice President for Human Resources; Interim VP for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging
