November 2, 2021

Dear Sewanee Family,

Last September, in its historic statement, the Board of Regents called for the University to become a “model of diversity, of inclusion, of intellectual rigor, and of loving spirit in an America that rejects prejudice and embraces possibility.” With the Regents’ resolve and vision, I laid out a set of initiatives for our work.

Then, in March, an update was provided on our progress toward those goals. Now, roughly one year on, I am pleased to provide another update about where we stand on these critical initiatives.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Progress Report: 12 months

We will redouble our efforts to recruit, retain, and support students from historically underrepresented communities.

  • The School of Theology enrolled an incoming class that is 19% BIPOC.
  • The College enrolled an incoming class that is 11.3% BIPOC.

We will redouble our efforts to recruit, employ, and retain faculty and staff from historically underrepresented communities.

  • Sewanee has joined the Consortium for Faculty Diversity to enhance the diversity of faculty members and of applicants for faculty positions, and promote diversity in curricular offerings.
  • Half of School of Theology faculty/senior staff hires since September are from historically underrepresented communities.
  • Several senior leadership hires were made from historically underrepresented communities. Alan Ramirez was named Associate Vice Provost and Dean of Admission and Financial Aid. Erica Howard was named Associate Vice Provost and Dean of Students. Sibby Anderson-Thompkins has been hired as Sewanee’s inaugural Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer.

In consultation with Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation scholars, we will continue its work to develop a comprehensive truth and reconciliation program around race in the South that serves as a model for our region and our country.

  • The School of Theology offered a workshop, "Confederate Symbols & Episcopal Churches: Tools for Leading Change" (developed by two recent alums, the Rev. Hannah Pommersheim and the Rev. Kellan Day, while they were Gessell Fellows) in connection with the alumni lectures in late September.
  • The Roberson Project’s work has broadened and deepened over the last year. The Project director has made presentations on the ongoing work at Sewanee to Episcopal churches in New York City, Atlanta, Birmingham, Augusta (Georgia), the Dioceses of Missouri and Colorado, and at other universities, including TCU and Yale.
  • Through the University’s and external grant support, the Roberson Project has bolstered its staffing in ways that diversify our engagement with Sewanee’s historic entanglements with slavery and Jim Crow. Joining the project are public historian Tiffany Momon, Ph.D. (tenure track hire, Department of History); senior research associate Anthony Maginn, Ph.D.; research assistant October Kamara (public history graduate student, MTSU); and half-time program manager Kathleen Solomon.
  • Thanks to a grant from the Council of Independent Colleges, the Project is collaborating with filmmaker Zaire Love to produce a short video (10-12 minutes, working title: "My University of My South") telling the story of the University through the voices of people whose lives and experiences have been omitted from past accounts of the University’s “saga.”
  • Another multi-year grant from the CIC is funding two major inter-campus initiatives with potential for broad impact on diversity, equity, and inclusion on multiple college campuses: first, the launch of an online database that will collect and disseminate information about college monuments and memorials to Confederates and slave-owners; and second, the creation of a curricular project that will partner students in courses on six diverse college campuses with leaders of community organizations to create public history and community archiving programs. 
  • The Project has continued and expanded its #SaveSewaneeBlackHistory initiatives with the launch of an online community-based archive (blacksewanee.org) that preserves and tells the histories of Sewanee’s historic Black community. In September the Project held its third community archiving reunion at the St. Mark’s Community Center, a community-building celebration of Sewanee’s Black history. It also presented its outreach work with booths at the Franklin County Juneteenth observance and at Sewanee’s Fourth of July celebration (including a parade float). 
  • The Project is sponsoring presentations on diverse topics related to its work, among them the following: a September presentation by Professor Michelle Caswell, Associate Professor of Archival Studies at UCLA, on how to dismantle institutional support for white supremacy by diversifying the lives and experiences represented in colleges’ official archival collections; an October programming series on racial reconciliation centered around the forthcoming documentary, "Mecklenburg County", which narrates the evolving relationship between two men, one Black and the other white, whose lives are deeply entangled in the history of slavery and Jim Crow; and a series of programming on the subject of reparations for slavery, culminating in the November campus appearance of Dr. William Darity and Ms. Kirsten Mullen, authors of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-first Century (UNC, 2020).

We will work with faculty to foster curricular approaches to presenting the full history of the South.

  • The core church history survey, required of all MA and MDiv students at the School of Theology, has been reworked to incorporate the findings of the Roberson Project.
  • The School of Theology’s Advanced Degrees Program, which draws parish clergy from across the United State, offered a course in summer 2021 requiring clergy to produce a study of race in their parish, as well as a course, "Preaching the Anti-Racist Gospel," that drew on the Roberson Project's work on monuments.

We will work with faculty to support fresh innovations in pedagogy and mentoring that equip students to navigate challenging conversations on race with skill, empathy, and knowledge.

  • School of Theology faculty completed group reading and reflection on Willie James Jennings’ After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging.
  • School of Theology faculty and students spent a day reading and discussing James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree, a landmark text in Black theology.
  • A third of the School of Theology faculty participated, with faculty from across the Episcopal Church’s seminaries, in a two-day workshop on diversifying curricula and syllabi.
  • Deborah Jackson, Associate Dean for Community life, is leading the School of Theology faculty and staff in “Words for G.R.A.C.E.,” a year-long project for faculty and students to build a foundational language in order to have meaningful conversations about race.
  • In August, Dr. Carlton Green (Director of Diversity Training & Education at University of Maryland) and Dr. Alice Donland (Director of Research, Teaching & Learning at UMD) presented a workshop for faculty titled, “A Fearless Framework for Infusing Inclusion Throughout Your Course.” Dr. Green will offer virtual consultations for faculty through this academic year and will deliver an in-person workshop on harm reduction in the classroom later in the fall.
  • The Center for Teaching hosted a Course Refresh Workshop in August that focused on inclusive syllabi, inclusive course design, and facilitating discussion in the classroom. 
  • Several Associated Colleges of the South workshops were available to faculty during the summer, including an in-person workshop on Designing Inclusive and Learner-Centered Courses and a virtual workshop on Inclusive Syllabi. Several Sewanee faculty were in attendance.
  • A second round of 11 faculty members were given grants from the Dean of the College to support DEI-informed innovations in their courses, bringing the total up to 21 faculty who have received these grants in the past year. A panel highlighting the work of the first round of grant recipients took place in the spring semester, and another will be scheduled for later in the fall.
  • Dr. Anderson-Tompkins committed to institutionalizing and funding the Conversations-Rich Education for Anti-Racist Teaching/Learning Environments (CREATE). Originally funded through a grant awarded by the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS), CREATE has developed and facilitated an educational series on implicit bias, microaggressions, and bystander interventions.

We will appoint a campus commission to evaluate the names and stories behind buildings, monuments, and places on the Domain to identify naming principles and practices and ensure that, in every instance, there is an appropriate balance between the contributions of the namesakes and the values of our University.

  • The Names and Places Committee was formed and began its work in August 2021. Members of the committee are researching and educating themselves on similar work done by other institutions. After this research and education step, a skeletal framework of guiding principles to evaluate honorifics on the Domain will be established. Next, they will gather input from Sewanee constituents to further develop the principles and process for evaluating honorifics. After the process for evaluation has been developed, each honorific on the Domain will be examined, and recommendations will be developed. A final report will be submitted to the Board of Regents at its June meeting. Learn more here. 

Ecce Quam Bonum,

Reuben E. Brigety, II, PhD
Vice-Chancellor and President