Mount Holyoke receives diversity award for third year

Mount Holyoke College has received the 2022 Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, the oldest and largest diversity-focused publication in higher education. 

As a recipient of the annual HEED Award — a national honor recognizing U.S. colleges and universities that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion — Mount Holyoke College will be featured, along with 102 other recipients, in the November 2022 issue of INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine. This is the third year the College has been a HEED Award recipient.

“We are grateful to work within a community where diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are rooted in focused antiracist and liberatory practices that center the wellbeing of all who work and learn here,” said Kijua Sanders-McMurtry, vice president for equity and inclusion at Mount Holyoke. “The HEED Award is an important way to honor and recognize the hard work of all the Mount Holyoke students, faculty, staff and alums who continue to invest their time, knowledge and energy into learning and teaching others about how to cultivate inclusive practices so that our campus can become a safer place for all who live and learn here.”

INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine selected Mount Holyoke College to receive the HEED Award for its holistic and intersectional Anti-Racism Action Plan and also for its annual Building On Our Momentum (BOOM!) Community Day, annual Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King Week of Racial Justice and Reconciliation, annual teach-ins on Indigenous Peoples’ Day and fighting antisemitism, and the MoZone Peer Education Program, as well as other programs and initiatives campus wide.

“The HEED Award process consists of a comprehensive and rigorous application that includes questions relating to the recruitment and retention of students and employees — and best practices for both — leadership support for diversity, campus culture and climate, supplier diversity, and many other aspects of campus diversity and inclusion,” said Lenore Pearlstein, publisher of INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine. “We take a detailed approach to reviewing each application in deciding who will be named a HEED Award recipient. Our standards are high, and we look for institutions where diversity and inclusion are woven into the work being done every day across their campus.”

Other recipients of the 2022 HEED Award include Agnes Scott College, Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, Smith College and Northwestern University. 

For more information about the 2022 HEED Award, visit insightintodiversity.com.