A Letter From Dr. Nicki Gonzales
Greetings Regis Community!
Congratulations on completing the fall semester! It’s been a rough ride these last couple of years, and we in ODEIE continue to be inspired by your resilience in the face of adversity, your kindness toward one another, and your deep commitment to our students.
Our Regis University guiding principles, eloquently shared with the community in 2017 by Fr. Fitzgibbons, continue to shape our work, as we honor the dignity of all and recognize that this long, hard work of shaping an inclusive community is everyone’s responsibility. We would like to express our most sincere gratitude to all of you who support our team and who are doing the work of equity and inclusion. Fr. Fitzgibbons reminded us that, as members of a Jesuit University community, we are called to embrace the discomfort of examining the most pressing issues of our time, and it is this work that we strive to support in ODEIE and in our collaborations with all of you.
Just a few highlights from this fall: We have continued our work of antiracism through our collaboration with the President’s Council on Race and Justice, our work with the AJCU’s new antiracism curriculum, and our new Student Diversity and Inclusion Ambassadors Program. The Land Acknowledgement work group hosted a remembrance vigil that featured Indigenous leaders from the Denver area, and this spring we plan to continue a dialogue about Indian Boarding schools in the US, particularly those operated by the Catholic Church. Our First-Generation Student Success Center hosted a week of events for National First Gen Student Week, and in November we hosted a premier screening of the film Las Chicanas: Nurturers and Warriors—an event that drew about 150 guests from Regis and Denver’s Latino Community.
In addition, we are pleased that the three colleges and Dayton Memorial Library all have robust Diversity committees who are pursuing their own unit-level DEI initiatives including book groups and best practices handbooks. Meanwhile, at the university level, the Inclusive Hiring Committee is working to create a training and handbook of best hiring practices, with the goal of diversifying the faculty and staff. We have also begun planning a thoughtful path toward becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution—a federal government designation for schools that meet specific criteria. Recognition as an HSI brings with it additional resources to support our growing Latino/Hispanic student population. This spring we will continue our Good Trouble Conversations, and we invite you all to participate.
We do our best to respond to the concerns of the community. In the feedback survey from earlier in the semester, an anonymous suggestion was submitted that we acknowledge various viewpoints on DEI topics. We are taking that into consideration in our future planning. As always, we welcome suggestions and conversations with our fellow Regis community members, particularly where our Jesuit Mission intersects with our DEI commitments.
Thank you again for your support and for your work in shaping a better Regis. We look forward to spending precious time with our families and friends over the holidays and wish you all a holiday season full of laughter, rest, and gratitude. For more information about our work, please see our website: regis.edu/diversity or call us at 303-964-5301.
See you in the spring!
Dr. Nicki Gonzales
Vice Provost for Diversity and Inclusion