During August Seminar Days you may have heard the name Ernise Williams in conjunction with references to multicultural education and inclusion leadership.  Please join me in enthusiastically welcoming Dr. Ernise Williams to the role of Co-Director, Center for Multicultural Education (CME).  Ernise is a tenure-track faculty member in the School of Nursing who is dedicating a portion of her workload to supporting inclusive, equitable, multicultural teaching and learning environments through faculty development and cross-campus partnerships.

Ernise brings a career full of expertise and a heart full of enthusiasm and commitment to the pursuit of social justice to this role.  In the healthcare field she has led diversity training efforts for executives and staff and developed and implemented a diversity strategic action plan to focus on improving the experiences of patients and staff from historically marginalized and underrepresented backgrounds.  Within the School of Nursing at Edgewood, she has facilitated a committee to examine advising and inclusivity in the SoN leading to a school-level Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Commitment Statement, and a standing committee to promote faculty development, and inclusion and equity for students.  She has lived, content, and pedagogical experiences facilitating cross-cultural discussions about social identities, power and privilege, and how such differences can impact individual and community responses to life circumstances as well as structures of inequity.  In short, Ernise will be a wonderful leader and resource for advancing teaching and learning, climate and institutional inclusion goals.

With the 2017-18 academic year the leadership in CME has been restructured to a co-director model where Multicultural Education, across all of Academic Affairs, and Ethnic Studies, as a particular interdisciplinary academic program, will each have a faculty member with release time to steward each of these areas.  The Ethnic Studies co-director position will be filled in the coming months.

Finally, I want to acknowledge Dr. Huining Ouyang for her contribution as Director of the Center for Multicultural Education. Huining has been a strong proponent for diversity and inclusion, and supporter of the development of faculty scholarship and pedagogical expertise.  I look forward to the ways in which this foundation will continue to grow and evolve through our shared sense that this work is central to how we respond to the needs of the times.