Dear Friends of ODI,

Welcome to our site!

We’ve been privileged to get to know many of you during the last several years of growing our capacity and integrating our work into the Office of the Vice President for Campus Life. We continue to build on the foundation laid by the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding and the Gender + Sexuality Resource Center, as well as the many individuals who paved the way for us. We created this review to help the broader University community understand how we can collectively be a resource to you.

Princeton’s informal motto “In the nation’s service and in the service of humanity” calls for our students to be responsible to the larger community beyond themselves. Through our efforts, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion–Campus Life (ODI) works to ensure that our students are equipped and prepared to answer the call.

We engage undergraduate and graduate students, provide targeted support to affinity groups and serve the broader campus community around the areas of identity, inclusion, and equity through university-wide programming, collaboration, student mentoring, community advising, and co-curricular education. Our focus on social justice education specifically engages students in understanding identity, difference, and community through exploring social equality, access, and individual and systemic oppression. We understand these to be foundational in recognizing societal impacts on humanity.

As a community of practice, we share a commitment to diversity and inclusion and an expectation of fostering an equitable environment for all. We are expanding this community through sustained engagement with campus partners for the purpose of sharing and gaining additional knowledge and experience around identity and inclusion; to better serve and support students. In this way, we all take collective ownership of the work.

The Fields Center and the Gender + Sexuality Resource Center are both housed within the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and remain distinct units with specific missions, histories, and legacies, and together, we work intersectionally because we understand that our students have layered identities and experiences. We also recognize that diversity and inclusion expand beyond the identities that are unique to each Center. To this end, we form deliberate partnerships across Centers and with other offices throughout the University to meet the holistic needs of students.

As we move through each phase of our work, ODI–Campus Life looks forward to pursuing new collaborative relationships that add nuance and depth to conversations and efforts related to identity.

We specifically undertake this charge by:

• Exploring processes that envision the future of our work in the ever-changing landscape of higher education
• Supporting units by integrating diversity-specific student learning outcomes into their initiatives and assisting with assessment
• Streamlining our processes to offer structured and customizable D&I training and development opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students
• Creating a community of practice that equips student-facing campus partners with diversity knowledge and skills

As we continue this ODI–Campus Life endeavor, we look forward to future and continued partnerships with you in our collective work together!

Forward,

LaTanya Buck Jones, Ph.D.
Dean, Office of Diversity and Inclusion
Office of the Vice President for Campus Life