A deep dive into Chapman’s Office of DEI: What’s already been accomplished, what other initiatives, directors students want to see
After Chapman’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) was established in 2021, the department has been hiring new directors and creating cultural events for the campus community. However, some students still feel like more could be done. Graphic by SUKHMAN SAHOTA, Art Director
Since 2021, Chapman University has been working on its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts with the introduction of the Office of DEI, spearheaded by Vice President of DEI Reginald Chhen Stewart, Ph.D. While many events and initiatives have been created by the office so far, students and staff members at the office agree that more could be done to strengthen DEI on campus.
A timeline of the Office of DEI’s initiatives since its foundation
Currently, Chapman’s Office of DEI operates out of the third floor of Argyros Forum (AF) in AF 302. According to Stewart, there were no faculty members focused solely on expanding DEI initiatives at Chapman before the office was created.
“Looking at Chapman, I always thought that the DEI efforts — while I think very well intended — structurally, they would have always had the challenge of being highly dependent on volunteers,” Stewart said. “So, if you have someone who is a business advisor or a person who works in IS&T, but they’re highly committed to DEI, they’re going to do as much as they can in the space in which they can operate. However, when their day job gets busy and complicated, what’s going to have to be put on the backburner is DEI work.”
“I think that’s a very fair sort of recitation of what Chapman’s DEI effort was beforehand — a lot of very competent, very well-intended people who were doing the work as an addendum to their other responsibilities. But, they needed help to curate that, and so my fundamental task of coming into Chapman was to build the type of team needed to do DEI work because I knew I couldn’t come in and just try to do this type of work solo.”
Since Stewart started his position, many directors for certain demographics have been added to the office, with their full-time jobs being dedicated to DEI work at a university level.
These staff members include:
Assistant Vice President of DEI and the Director for Latinx Achievement Gabriela Castañeda
Executive Assistant to the Vice President Christine Victorin
Executive Director of the Cross-Cultural Center (CCC) and First Generation Programs Araceli Martinez
Director of Black Excellence and Achievement Misty Levingston
Assistant Director of the Promising Futures and First Generation Programs Athina Cuevas
Director for LGBTQ Pride and Achievement Kevin Nguyen-Stockbridge.
Along with the hiring of new directors, the Office of DEI has also been trying to make strides towards Chapman’s Strategic Plan For DEI by focusing on initiatives related to expanding the university's DEI curriculum, strengthening equity and access in the recruitment of students and staff, developing programs to cultivate a welcoming campus and creating and sustaining outreach programs with Orange’s local community, among others.
While the fortification of this strategic plan has mostly been happening in the background at the administrative level, the Office of DEI has also been trying to bring more awareness of DEI to the forefront of campus.
Some of these initiatives tailored to students include cultural holiday and month posters placed around campus, DEI events created by directors for students to attend, cultural graduations and Chapman’s commitment to becoming a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) by the year 2028.
However, even with these current initiatives in place, students on campus are hoping for more in order to give them the support and help they need to succeed.
The demand for a director to support Asian, Pacific Islander students
While the Office of DEI does have specific directors for many of the demographics at Chapman, there is one director in particular that students say is lacking.
“I am really grateful for the Office of DEI because I do truly believe that they care about the students at this school and are here to help all of us,” said senior computer science major Alexa Zuch. “But as someone of Filipino heritage, I really wish that there was a director in place at the office to support Asian and Pacific Islander students.”
According to Stewart, the Office of DEI currently doesn’t have a director in place solely to provide support and resources to Asian or Pacific Islander students on campus.
As showcased in enrollment distribution information from DataMart, 16% of Chapman’s undergraduate population identified as Asian for the fall 2023 semester. Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students take up about 0.2% of the undergraduate population, as of Fall 2023.
Stewart states that not yet having a director for Asian and Pacific Islander students “was a mistake on his part,” and a large part of why the position has not yet been created is due to how difficult it has been for the office to receive funding for the position from the university.
“During the time that we had wanted to request funding for this new director, the Ethnic Studies minor in Wilkinson College was also trying to request funding for a director of the department and also a director for the Asian American Studies minor,” Stewart said. “So, when it’s time to requisition new positions and all the units and departments put their position requests forward, I realized that if (the Office of DEI) also put in a request for an APIDA director and there was also one for the Asian American Studies minor, we were going to cannibalize.”
He continued: “We probably weren’t going to get both positions funded, and we potentially would not have gotten either because the recommendation from the people in charge of funding requests could be like, ‘Get on the same page.’ So, I pulled the director request from here and then the other one got funded as a result.”
However, Stewart does understand the demand from students to fund this specific director position, and discussions have already started taking place regarding a title for the new position and what it will entail.
“With each year, it does get more and more difficult to get what you need, and now, it’s becoming a bit more complex to get this position funded,” Stewart told The Panther. “So, what I will probably have to end up doing is taking some money out of my general operating budget to carve out the role because I’m not willing to not do the job. This position is one that is outstanding for me, and it’s something that needs to be concluded.”
According to Stewart, the position is estimated to be called the Director of Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) Heritage and Achievement. This position is the last of the full-time directors that Stewart outlined when he was coming into the role, and currently, it’s “still in the queue.”
“I believe having a director for Asian and Pacific Islander students will help to foster a stronger community between those specific students and the university as a whole,” senior computer science major Kayla Anderson told The Panther. “Right now, I think some Asian students on campus don’t feel like they fully belong here, or they haven’t been able to find that sense of support they’ve been looking for.”
Anderson continued: “So, I think having a director who is able to facilitate and create events for Asians and Pacific Islanders would help a lot to foster community for these students on campus.”
Once the Office of DEI does hire a director for Asian and Pacific Islander students, which is estimated to happen sometime during the 2024-25 school year, Stewart hopes to work with them to file an application to have Chapman become an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (AANAPISI).
Currently, Chapman already exceeds one of the eligibility requirements to become an AANAPISI, which is to have an enrollment of undergraduate students that is made up of at least 10% Asian American, Native American and Pacific Islander students. As of the fall 2023 semester, Chapman has a combined 16.3% undergraduate population of those three aforementioned demographics, according to DataMart.
However, another eligibility requirement for Chapman to become an AANAPISI is for the university to have at least 50% of its students receiving need-based financial assistance or Pell Grants, which is currently not the case. According to Chapman’s website, approximately only 19% of students are awarded Pell Grants each year.
“We meet the enrollment number for an AANAPISI, but we do not meet the financial need requirements,” Stewart said. “So, the U.S. Department of Education will give you a waiver, but it is quite a long labor-intensive process.”
Once an Asian Pacific Islander director is hired for the Office of DEI, Stewart wants them to be the one to “spearhead” Chapman’s ascent into becoming an AANAPISI.
“I think that having an AANAPISI designation would be really important for us, but I don’t feel comfortable applying for the designation without the director,” he said. “I would like the director to be the lead author on the application because I think it’s the most authentic.”
Once Chapman does receive an AANAPISI designation, then the university can also be recognized as a minority-serving institution (MSI), meaning that it enrolls a significant percentage of undergraduate students from minority groups.
According to statistics from Bankrate, there are over 700 designated MSIs across the U.S., representing about 14% of all degree-granting institutions in the country. In Orange County alone, there are currently 16 designated MSIs, according to a 2022 MSI list published by Rutgers Graduate School of Education.
“Any of those designations — an HSI or an AANAPISI — gives you that MSI recognition,” Stewart said. “So, it’s a bit of a puzzle.”
Office of DEI’s structure in tandem with the university leaves some students confused
While most students who frequent the Office of DEI and the CCC know that they’re able to talk with directors or attend events there, some students have expressed being a “bit puzzled” by the Office of DEI’s structure and what specific departments and programs fall under its leadership.
According to Zuch, she has utilized Chapman’s Disability Services in the past to help her with her classes, as well as to receive accommodations from the department for housing. However, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for her.
“I’ve run into a few problems with Disability Services where they haven’t approved housing accommodations for me, which has been quite a problem because it can be hard to get in contact with them sometimes,” Zuch said. “So, I assumed I could try to get in touch with the Office of DEI instead to streamline the process.”
However, as Stewart explains, the Office of DEI isn’t actually tied to the Disability Services department in any way.
“Right now, Disability Services falls under Chapman’s Student Affairs department, meaning that we don’t have any jurisdiction over how Disability Services is interacting with students,” he said. “Especially if students and faculty do believe that Disability Services is already under the Office of DEI, it would make sense for it to be.”
According to Stewart, Chapman’s administration picks and chooses what departments fall under specific branches, so the Office of DEI doesn’t play any role in facilitating whether or not Disability Services is part of their department or not.
Another thing Stewart added in is the importance of the “I” in DEI, which stems from the disability movement.
“Many don’t realize that the ‘I for inclusion’ in DEI has always been rooted in the disability movement, and it was mainstreaming in classrooms because it was the least restrictive environment. However, people have since then taken inclusion and pushed it out for demographics and all of these other things, but that was the core.”
He continued: “You can’t really do DEI without also focusing on the disability side of things, but the structure as it is currently at Chapman, Disability Services will continue to reside in Student Affairs for the time being. That’s just the way it is now.”
Stewart also explained that the CCC only became a part of the Office of DEI less than two years ago after he had already been hired to his position. Before that, the CCC fell under the Student Affairs department, whereas the Promising Futures First-Generation Program (PFP) was in a different academic unit altogether.
Stewart and his team had been the ones to help facilitate the transition of getting both the CCC and PFP brought over to the Office of DEI indefinitely.
“We were like, ‘Well, if PFP is this great first-generation program with little to no space to operate out of, and you’ve got the CCC that wants to be more dynamic and fluid,’ if you put the two together working in tandem, you could probably do some pretty cool things,” Stewart said said. “But, that transition required us to take a look at how things at Chapman were structured and built and say, ‘Just because that’s how it was 10 years ago, five years ago, (that) doesn’t mean that’s the way it has to remain.’”
Stewart continued: “Now that the CCC has been in our unit for a few years, we can seriously start taking a look at other units or departments or divisions and try to see what makes sense. You play the long game on this.”
With that in mind, Stewart hopes that there can be more collaboration between the Office of DEI and Disability Services down the line.
“One of the things that we miss in DEI from an organization standpoint is to also take care of the caretakers, and what we forget is that those folks in disability administration, they need support and structure and people being around them who also support their population,” he said. “So there’s a bit more solidarity in the work because if you look at the history of the disability rights movement, it is (in) lockstep with civil rights and social justice.”
Currently, other departments that fall under Student Affairs include Greek Life, Student Engagement, Residence Life and First Year Experience, Student Health Center and Student Psychological Counseling Services, among others.
“Right now, things are the way they are because of the organizational structure of the university,” Stewart said. “Will that structure always exist? I’d never say never.”
Some students, faculty members aren’t aware of events that are being hosted by the Office of DEI
While the Office of DEI does host many events throughout the school year for various demographics on campus, including events for Black History Month or events for First Generation Week, some students were surprised to hear about the events because they hadn’t seen lots of marketing or promotions for them.
“I know that the CCC and the Office of DEI do hold events for students, which I think is really great because it allows students to find that sense of community,” said junior business administration major Kaylin Li. “But, I feel like I don’t hear about these events as much as I should.”
Li continued: “I’ll finally see some promotion for an event sponsored by the Office of DEI, and I’ll be interested in going. But then, I’ll look at the date and it would say that it’s already passed.”
Currently, the Office of DEI normally markets its events either through the CCC’s Instagram, the Promising Futures Program newsletter, the LGBTQ+ Panther Hub, which students can join via Canvas, and through word-of-mouth. There have also been a few instances where the Office of DEI’s events were announced in Dean of Students Jerry Price’s weekly emails, which are sent out every Monday morning.
When asked how Li usually gets her information about events being hosted by the Office of DEI, she emphasized Price’s weekly emails, word-of-mouth and friends sending her posts of the events from the CCC’s Instagram as the primary ways.
However, Li states that these ways of communication aren’t always “full proof” since her friends may not always tell her about events or she may forget to check Instagram for a few days.
“I think the ways that the Office of DEI are currently marketing events works for those students and faculty members who visit the office and the CCC a lot, especially since they’re more inclined to hear about events from people talking about them,” Li told The Panther. “Word of mouth is a good way to market events, but there should be more of an emphasis on reaching the general student body too.”
Li believes that putting up flyers for Office of DEI events could help promote further outreach to more of Chapman’s student body. She also thinks that projecting the office’s events on the TVs in AF could attract more students to come out to events as well.
“Promoting events in AF is extremely helpful because there are tons of students there every day, and they’re always looking at the TVs to find out about things happening on campus,” she said.
Along with that, Stewart and his team have been undergoing their evaluation period in order to pinpoint what has been working and not working in the Office of DEI so that improvements can be made wherever necessary.
“Now, we’ve been taking a look at the comprehensive slate of our programming and determining what we are going to keep and what was a nice idea but sort of failed to launch correctly,” Stewart said. “One thing that is absolutely true is that the faculty and staff on college campuses are relatively static, but the students always change. So, we have to be willing to say, ‘Well, this was an interesting program for that group, but they’re not interested in that anymore.’”
He continued: “You have to be constantly ready to ask and figure out what about the students’ experience do we need to nuance.”
What’s in store for the Office of DEI going forward
While the Office of DEI is still relatively new to the Chapman community, there has been a lot of growth in terms of new faculty members and initiatives since its origin. And, Stewart and the rest of his team are “very eager” to see what else is in store over the coming years.
“All of what we’re doing in the office is sort of the work of changing the DEI ecosystem and structure for the university, and that’s not really glamorous. But, it’s foundational if you want the work to last beyond your time at the institution. Eventually, I’ll retire, and when the next person comes in, they will now already have a system built for them to continue doing DEI work.”
