Articles

The DMC: A Refined Vision

By Madeleine Cerone

September 27, 2024

This year, our Director Dr. Koboul E. Mansour is giving the Days-Massolo Multicultural Center an internal make-over. Dr. Mansour is adopting a Three-Year Strategic Plan and instituting a new program called the Multicultural Fellows Program (MFP) to help the DMC reach a more educational and collaborative approach to advocacy on campus. In particular, the DMC will focus on enhancing student, administrator, and faculty engagement and support, increasing collaboration with campus partners, and promoting campus-wide advocacy and awareness.  

The DMC plans to achieve some of the goals set by the three year plan through the MFP, a program intended to foster student leadership development in a way that will promote inclusive education, social justice, and multicultural understanding across Hamilton’s campus. To achieve this goal, our five new Multicultural Fellows will focus on topics that examine how contextual factors like race, sexuality, gender, socioeconomic status, and campus climate impact students’ academic and personal experiences on campus. Through this initiative, the Multicultural Fellows will engage the campus community in critical conversations that will allow all of us to explore our identities, privilege and power structures, and to develop informed advocacy for social change.

“What inspired the creation of the Multicultural Fellows Program was the desire to create a more in-depth and sustained leadership experience for students committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion,” said Dr. E. Mansour, DMC Director, when asked about the new program. In this research-practitioner model the Multicultural Fellows will take on a  proactive, academic, and systemic approach to advocacy on campus. “The Multicultural Fellows Program allows for a deeper engagement with both the theoretical and practical aspects of inclusion work. The goal is to provide students with ongoing opportunities for personal growth, critical reflection, and community leadership, rather than focusing solely on representing the center in specific events. Fellows are expected to develop sustained relationships with their peers, administrators, faculty, and community, allowing them to influence campus culture on a more systemic level”, Koboul added.

We would like to welcome Ru Lambert, Bella Ocava, Rachel Shin, Kip Ortega, and Mame Thiam as our five new DMC Multicultural Fellows. We would also like to celebrate the addition of Jun Reiss, Cluster Fellow, Lina Igumnova, Media Presence Fellow, and Ashley Beck, Communications Fellow, to our DMC team. We are so excited to explore and pursue the new vision of the DMC with you!