Diversity Initiative

Diversity: A Core Value of our Institution—
and Essential to Academic Excellence

Parsons The New School for Design values its diverse students, faculty, and staff, who reflect the communities where they live, interact, and create. Recognizing that design holds great potential as a tool for social change, Parsons works to equip tomorrow's designers with a deep understanding of the social, economic, and political forces that shape our ideas as well as our studio practices.

Parsons Diversity Initiative

In 2007, Parsons launched a comprehensive diversity initiative. More than a superficial acknowledgment of human difference, the Parsons Diversity Initiative takes concrete steps to construct a socially engaged art and design institution, where students address problems extending across race, class, gender, and culture.

Parsons' Commitment to Diversity

The Parsons community comprises many lived experiences, social identities, cultures, intellectual approaches, and beliefs—all of which are deeply rooted and perpetually in flux. Parsons believes we must understand the historical, political, and social contexts in which teaching and learning take place in order to embrace diversity and prepare students to create innovative and thoughtful solutions to present inequalities and injustices. The Diversity Initiative seeks the contributions and leadership of people who have been historically underrepresented in higher education, particularly in the United States, so that Parsons can become the community the initiative seeks to create.

Diversity Goals

The Diversity Initiative is organized around three broad objectives:

1. Increasing the compositional diversity of our students, faculty, and staff. Initial efforts have included evaluating faculty hiring processes and student and faculty recruitment and retention strategies to identify barriers preventing candidates from accessing the institution.
2. Cultivating a learning environment where all can thrive. This includes helping faculty to develop the tools to effectively teach students of diverse cultures and to design innovative and inclusive coursework that will get to the heart of current social issues. Parsons seeks to provide specialized support programs for students of color, LGBTQ, and low-income students, and seeks to create more intercultural learning opportunities for all of its students.
3. Achieving institutional change through policies and practices that reflect the values of access, equity, and excellence. Parsons will develop ways to measure success as well as identify the new challenges it will face in the future as it works to achieve its long-term commitment to diversity.

Actions and Achievements

• Facilitating student-centered focus groups to ensure that student needs and perspectives are driving Parsons' diversity goals
• Working to increase faculty diversity by assessing the faculty-search committee process, expanding recruitment tools, providing workshops to faculty leadership, and monitoring applicant pools to measure race, ethnic, and gender diversity
• Organizing day-long retreats for Parsons deans and administrative leadership focusing on the needs, responsibilities, and opportunities presented by the diversity initiative
• Promoting faculty forums to encourage and identify opportunities for further faculty participation in campus diversity efforts
• Developing an ongoing program to enable faculty to discuss themes of race, class, gender, sexuality, and social inequality and their relationship to the areas of teaching, curricular design, and research
• Creating diversity dialogue programs for Parsons administrative staff to help create a stronger sense of community and promote staff leadership in diversity efforts
• Establishing, with Parsons Board of Governors Chair and New School Trustee Sheila Johnson, a high-level external advisory committee, consisting of administrators, curators, and educators from a range of local arts and cultural organizations, to better inform diversity planning and expand institutional networks

Related Efforts

Parsons Scholars Program. Through a variety of scholarships and free events, Parsons strives to make its physical and human resources available to a diverse student body. Programs such as the Parsons Scholars Program, which provides scholarship opportunities for students attending New York City public schools to attend Parsons' rigorous Pre-College Academy, exemplify the school's commitment to exploring innovative, accessible educational models.

University Working Group on Student Support for Students of Color and LGBTQ Students. In fall 2009, a group was created by the university provost to survey the programs, services, and support structures currently in place at The New School that serve the needs of students of color and LGBTQ students. The Parsons Diversity Initiative played an instrumental role in the execution of the group's study and the subsequent development of their report, which included recommendations on promising co‐curricular models and structures that could be modified and strengthened to better serve the needs of students throughout the university.

Contact Us

To learn more about the Parsons Diversity Initiative or to share your comments and ideas, please contact the Diversity Initiative office by email at parsonsdiversity@newschool.edu or by phone at 212.229.8950 x4223.