PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Brown University has earned a Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) award for its campus-wide commitment to advancing diversity and inclusion across all facets of its community.

The HEED award recognizes U.S. colleges and universities that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion through strong leadership and sustained efforts to recruit and retain diverse students, faculty and staff. Recipients are chosen annually by INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, the oldest and largest diversity-focused publication in higher education.

The award selection committee awarded Brown this distinction in recognition of the sustained, strategic commitment of its community members to strengthening diversity and inclusion on campus, said Shontay Delalue, vice president for institutional equity and diversity at the University.

“The HEED Award is a national signpost to denote the colleges and universities that are working strategically and intentionally to enact more diverse, inclusive and equitable living, working and learning environments,” she said. “We are proud of our progress to date, which demonstrates a track record of increasing the number of faculty, staff and graduate students who are historically underrepresented in the academy.”

Delalue attributed Brown’s recent progress in creating an increasingly diverse and inclusive campus to the University’s Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP). Launched in 2016, the DIAP is a campus-wide action plan that calls upon all academic and administrative departments to identify specific ways that they will contribute to the University’s goal of creating a more diverse and inclusive academic community that addresses issues of racism and discrimination.

Last April, the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity shared its plans to launch Phase II of the DIAP, which will use community feedback gathered from virtual forums held this summer to review the plan’s original goals and update the University’s strategies for achieving them.

“We recognize we have much work still yet to do, and my office will continue to coordinate these efforts centrally using a collaborative implementation framework across the institution,” Delalue said.