Vice President for Enrollment Planning & Management’s Letter

Welcome to the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice website.

Here at the University of Connecticut, we place the utmost value on diversity. We demonstrate this by creating an environment that is welcoming, inclusive, and authentic. We strive to provide the members of our community with a sense of belonging as they study, work, question, and research. While this is a shared commitment across the community, we recognize that it is a work in progress, as historically we have fallen short on delivering on our commitment to each other.

We are at our best, when the ‘we’ is inclusive and welcoming of people from the widest range of backgrounds. When we are at our best, we push our thinking, generate new perspectives, new inventions, and produce solutions to big problems. Without an authentic environment that embraces diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, we will fall short in addressing the serious challenges that our society faces today and in the future. It is critical that we get this right.

Our dedication to becoming a more justice-oriented and anti-racist institution is not simply the job of one, but a job for us all. To this end, the Division of Enrollment Planning & Management, (including the Office of the Vice President, the Lodewick Visitors Center, Undergraduate Admissions, Orientation Services, Student Financial Aid Services, and the Office of the Registrar), is committed to ongoing conversations and action to foster a continually improving culture of equity, inclusion, and justice. We believe that our commitment will support the ever-growing diversity among our prospective students, current students, alumni, staff, faculty, and administration. We are dedicated to being deliberate about ensuring opportunities and success for an increasingly diverse student body and workforce.

Our division relies on resources provided by university leaders among the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice team, including this site, to serve as a guidepost for our crucial work and efforts that will be made as we advance the climate and conversation here at UConn.

The Division of Enrollment Planning & Management hopes to serve as a leader, an example, of where we get it right, by using the resources presented here and elsewhere. By drawing upon this and other valuable resources around us, engaging and conversation and action, we can be a conduit of progress. We acknowledge where we have been, and the tireless work of many has brought us to where we are today. We acknowledge that by committing to getting it right, we will be brought to a place that is better than where we stand today.

Sincerely,

Nathan Fuerst, Vice President