Nara Shin | News Writer
This fall, there is a new office on campus. The Student Success and Equity department is a newly combined unit of three offices in the student life division: Student Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (SDEI), Student Success, and Educational Support Services. Being one union, Student Success and Equity contains more synergy to better serve Whitworth’s diverse student body.
The recent establishment of this combined department comes at a crucial time. While the country finds itself facing many issues such as racism, sexism, and socioeconomic status discrimination, Whitworth is working to combat those topics with the offerings from the Student Success and Equity department.
The Associate Dean of Student Success and Equity is Dr. Sean Washington. He explains the new union’s mission as not only being for students to get help on accomplishing academic goals but to also “impact persistence, retention, access for students.”
Currently, the offices are located in different buildings such as Hendrick Hall with the Intercultural Student Center, Lindaman Center, and the Hixon Union Building.
If students confront discriminatory situations during the semester, they are encouraged to reach out to the SDEI managers in Student Success and Equity.
The officers would notify students of transformable skills to push through the situations and actions that they might have to support students to impact. They are also in charge of reporting the issues to solve the main cause of the problem.
Because of personal experiences of being confronted by racism for the color of her skin, one transfer student is thankful to have the Student Success and Equity department.
”I am so proud and happy to have this department on campus for being our help,” they said.
Washington says staff members are planning on doing workshops on racism, language, identity, and allyship to provide students resources to foster intercultural development. These workshops are currently in the testing face with student leaders attending Zoom call sessions to learn about these topics.
While the webpage for the Student Success and Equity department is still in the works, to learn more about student success in general, log on to https://www.whitworth.edu/cms/administration/student-success/