SNHU releases comprehensive plan to combat inequalities in education

MANCHESTER, NH –  Southern New Hampshire University has released a comprehensive plan of action to address racism and inequalities for all learners on June 1, following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed African-American man who died after Minneapolis, Minn. Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for over 8 minutes.

Paul Leblanc, President of SNHU collaborated with African-American colleagues at the university to develop a plan for the university with the following actions to be set in place:

• A $5 million trustee-designated Social Justice Fund to address the inequities that too often get in the way of minority students completing their education.
• A review by academic leadership and reworking of the Criminal Justice and Justice Studies programs, which educate thousands of people in or aspiring to enter the criminal justice system, to integrate the topics of equity, bias and discrimination, structural racism, and restorative justice throughout their curricula.
• The reworking of the current General Education core to more directly address issues of race and equity, not as a course alone, but as an ethos that runs throughout an SNHU education.
• To create and hire for an equity design team to work on equity design across the full breadth of our activities, from academic programs to hiring to systems and processes.
• The expansion of work with partners like Duet and DaVinci, working with the most underserved populations in the country. SNHU commits to being in communities of color with affordable degree programs tied to opportunity, culturally informed, and responsive to the trauma of those communities.

“Perhaps George Floyd will be for our generation what Emmett Till was for an earlier generation, a symbol of just how brutally inhuman America can be to people and communities of color, someone whose death sparks the national outrage that declares ‘No more’,” Leblanc said during an address to faculty and staff.