Dear Members of the Barnard Community,
I am delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Jennifer Rosales, a proven champion for inclusion in the classroom and across the College, as Barnard’s Vice President for Inclusion and Engaged Learning, and Chief Diversity Officer.
This appointment marks a milestone in Barnard’s commitment to shaping an inclusive community of scholars that invites and supports all voices. In this retitled role, Vice President Rosales succeeds Ariana González Stokas, our inaugural Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, who moved to Canada last spring to be with her family. Vice President Rosales and her team will continue to build capacity for diversity, equity, and inclusion work both in and beyond the classroom; help ensure that individual diversity initiatives are part of a larger College strategy that helps Barnard fulfill its mission; and advise me and other senior leaders.
As we surveyed the national landscape for this critical position, we determined that Vice President Rosales’s track record of leadership and innovation, her scholarship, and her thorough understanding of Barnard’s distinctive culture and mission uniquely position her to help the College grow in this realm.
As the Inaugural Executive Director of the Center for Engaged Pedagogy (CEP), Vice President Rosales has worked with faculty, students, staff, and visitors to help elevate and innovate the work that goes on in our classrooms, laboratories, libraries, and performance spaces. In the process, she has established the CEP as a catalyst and guide in centering equity and inclusion at Barnard. The CEP has created faculty communities of practice for anti-racism; launched a Racial Equity Institute with the Dean for Faculty Diversity and Development to help department chairs develop strategic planning centered on DEI; led book groups and brown bag lunches on inclusive classroom practices; and created guides on equity and access, including gender inclusion in the classroom.
Over the last year, as a member of the DEI Cabinet that reported directly to me, Vice President Rosales helped the institution maintain momentum in all of its efforts to promote inclusivity and a welcoming climate. She serves a key role on our Committee on Free Expression, whose work is an important step in our efforts to make our classrooms places where everyone can undertake the courageous exploration of challenging ideas in a supportive and respectful environment — our goal is to create not just a safe space, but also a brave space.
Vice President Rosales will continue to benefit from the counsel and support of the DEI Cabinet, which will now report to her. In addition, the Center for Engaged Pedagogy will now co-report to Vice President Rosales and Provost Linda Bell, in recognition of its centrality in our DEI efforts. CEP Senior Associate Director Melissa Wright will be interim executive director as we search for a new Executive Director for the CEP. The Office for Community Engagement and Inclusion (CE&I) will have a dual report to Vice President Rosales and to our new Senior Advisor to the President, Emma Wolfe.
As I have said many times before, the work of making Barnard a more diverse and inclusive community is difficult and it is urgent. It cannot be the work of one person — we each bear responsibility for bringing to life this central element of our mission in continuing our efforts to dismantle racism and oppression, including anti-ablism, anti-Asian hate, anti-Blackness, anti-Muslim racism, anti-Semitism, transphobia and other forms of hate. The Vice President’s role is to help us maintain that focus and to call us together as a community, where we can make a lasting impact. I invite you to join me in congratulating Vice President Rosales, and in recommitting to working with all our faculty, students, staff, alumnae, and friends to help Barnard become the community to which we aspire.
Sincerely,
Sian Leah Beilock
President