Southwestern College has been on an intentional journey the last three years to fully embrace the beautiful diversity of our students and professionals. Not unlike the rest of our country, our college has faced some uncomfortable realities of employees and students feeling excluded on our campuses. We have been working systemically to address inequities, build collaborations across our community and address difficult situations head on.
We are very optimistic about our path forward. We have taken strides—both large and small—to build an equitable and inclusive environment for all who step onto our five campuses. One highlight of those efforts is the coming together of all of our student learning communities. We have installed classrooms next to our new Math, Science and Engineering building to house all of our learning communities so that our students can share resources, ideas and connect academically and socially. This learning community hub will be fully operational this semester and we will celebrate this unity with story, food, and drumming.
At our last Governing Board meeting, we heard the impact of the learning communities currently operating at Southwestern. These cohorts of students take many of the same classes together, study together and attend activities as a group. Southwestern College has created culturally based learning communities that welcome students interested in learning more about each of the cultures and communities. Currently Southwestern’s learning communities include Bayan Scholars to learn about the Filipinx-American, the Puente Project whose mission it is to increase the number of Latinx students transferring to four-year universities and Umoja, which is dedicated to enhancing the cultural and educational experiences of African-American students. This semester, students, faculty and staff will be collaborating to create a fourth learning community to support the educational needs of LGBTQIA+ students.
The energy, initiatives and problem-solving our students create continue to inspire me every day and ground me in our work to make Southwestern College the best higher education institution it can be.
Such efforts of inclusion also help us find real meaning to celebrations such as Black History Month. Through activities at our college we honor the courage of historian Carter G. Woodson—who in 1926 created Negro History Week in Washington, D.C. According to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Woodson was the second black American to receive a PhD in history from Harvard—following W.E.B. Du Bois by a few years. To Woodson, the black experience was too important simply to be left to a small group of academics. Woodson believed that his role was to use black history and culture as a weapon in the struggle for racial uplift. By 1916, Woodson had moved to DC and established the “Association for the Study of Negro Life and Culture,” an organization whose goal was to make black history accessible to a wider audience.
This weekend we also celebrate the inclusion of our undocumented and DACA students with the Dreamer Center Conference. This free event will be held on Saturday on the Chula Vista campus from 8:30 am – 12:30 pm. Students and families can hear from fellow Dreamer students and learn about legal immigration resources. For more information, visit www.swccd.edu/events.
Murillo is Superintendent/President Southwestern College.
