2024 - 2025 IEFI Projects
Good Trouble & Good Eats
Project Advisor: Michelle D. Ray, Associate Dean and Director of Case Management | Director of the Inclusive Excellence Fellows Initiative
Fellow: Neria Spence ‘28
Project Description: The goal of this project is to build community through storytelling and connection. It will examine how our own actions and the actions of others impact our sense of belongingness and explore how to identify and tear down barriers that cause us to feel isolated. This project will encourage participants to expand their personal concepts and build foundations for friendships despite differences, all while sharing a meal with community members.
Project Objectives:
- Host a progressive meal throughout the academic year that will permit a small group of diverse students, faculty, and staff to learn more about each other and challenge themselves to grow together.
- Creatively guide the participants to chronicle and share their lived experiences with our community.
- Journal and creativity share the overall experience.
In Community ~ Connecting Across Differences, Promoting Belonging
Project Advisor: Brooke Vick, Vice President Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Fellow: Claress Bahamundi ’27
Project Description: This project aims to cultivate a campus environment that embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Through research, benchmarking, training, assessment, and community engagement, the Fellow will foster increased participation in dialogue across identity differences to build empathy and understanding; encourage application of dialogue skills in daily interactions and collaborations throughout the campus community. Increase community interest in, and develop understanding of concepts related to diversity, equity, and inclusion to increase cultural sensitivity, literacy, and awareness within the Swarthmore community.
Project Objectives:
- Conduct research to identify best practices for implementing DEI in co-curricular settings.
- Plan, facilitate, promote, and evaluate training sessions for faculty, staff, and students, fostering cultural competency and inclusive practices in collaboration with Project Advisor and co-facilitators.
- Elevate community interest and understanding of DEI concepts, encouraging active participation in DEI dialogue, daily practices, and collaborative efforts.
Inclusion at Work: Diversity in Careers
Project Advisor: Erin Massey, Senior Associate Director of Career Services
Fellows: Tobias Cen ’28 and Olivia Eaton ‘28
Project Description: This project is designed to explore DEI topics related to career exploration, opportunities, and resolving concerns. Topics might include support for imposter syndrome, interviewing, employer evaluation, building social capital, self advocacy, and presentation of self. Fellows will also inform students and our community of best practices for professionals of diverse backgrounds seeking careers post-graduation.
Project Objectives:
- Explore latest DEI trends in careers
- Explore and benchmark best practices for career services at other institutions
- Conceptualize and implement a program on campus that will offer support and education to students from diverse backgrounds on how to navigate their intended careers.
Inclusion Beyond Graduation: Senior Class Capsule Project
Project Advisor: Dee Butler-Simms, Associate Director of Alumni and Family Communities
Fellows: Augustella Makiese ‘25
Project Description: This project is designed to research and archive events, artifacts, 3-D, digital, and written pieces from diverse students and student groups on campus about DEI topics and/or projects related to the senior class experience during their time at Swarthmore and the transition from student to alumni. Additionally, it will include developing the Senior Class Officer position of Class Historian in collaboration with the Office of Alumni and Family Communities.
Project Objectives:
- Create the foundation to research and archive events and written, digital, and 3-D items from the senior class and student groups in collaboration with the Office of Alumni and Family Communities.
- Listen to the classes to get insight from the senior class, alumni, and campus partners about how to make the project successful in revealing at each class's 5th-year reunion.
- Develop the framework and description for the Senior Class Officer Position of Class Historian.
Mining for Solutions ~ BCC Community in Conversations
Project Advisor: Karima Bouchenafa, Assistant Dean and Director of the Black Cultural Center
Fellow: Joie Romelus ‘27
Project Description: This program aims to bridge communication gaps and promote understanding by providing a platform for students to discuss and share feedback on campus policies. Fellows will research best practices from other universities, facilitate discussions, and empower students to take an active role in policy development.
Project Objectives:
- Facilitate faculty, staff, and/or student conversations to identify potential solutions to community oriented prompts about frequent perceptions and feelings related to Swarthmore processes and policies.
- Identify opportunities to improve Swarthmore’s processes and policies researching best practices and incorporating community feedback.
- Manage the assessment of suggested changes and offer recommendations to identified areas of the college.
Radical Practice of Care
Project Advisor: Ashley Netanel, Health & Wellness Educator
Fellow: Natalie Pham ‘26
Project Description:The purpose of this project is to identify practices of sustainable care for self, community, and across differences especially for those involved in social justice work. Participating in any social justice effort is a deeply social and emotional experience that often falls on the shoulders of marginalized groups. Without sufficient social and emotional skills and support (i.e. care), activists can come up against conflict, burnout, and ultimately disengagement.
Project Objectives:
- Gather information from campus community members and other activists about the social/emotional factors that have led to sustained engagement in or disengagement from activism.
- Research and identify a set of key skills and practices that can allow the Swarthmore Community who engage in DEI and social justice work to take care of themselves, their communities, and practice care across identities/perspectives.
- Begin envisioning a long-standing initiative that imparts these key skills and practices to increase the capacity for continued DEI involvement.
Uncovering Swarthmore’s International Community
Project Advisor: Kathryn Melvin, Student and Scholar Immigration Specialist, International Student Center
Fellow: Michael Ugwe ‘25
Project Description: How long have international students been coming to Swarthmore? What was it like to be an international student 50, 25, 10 years ago and now? How do we continue to strengthen and grow this community? This project hopes to answer these questions and more by capturing and lifting up the experiences, history, contributions and presence of the international community at Swarthmore College. It will examine how the international community has developed over time and seek to tell the stories of international community members, with the intention to continue to build our global community on campus.
Project Objectives:
- Identify key campus partners in our journey to uncover the history of the international community.
- Collect data from identified campus partners to establish a timeline of key events impacting the international community at Swarthmore.
- Highlight international community experiences on campus and beyond through storytelling, art and narratives.
We’ve Always Been Here: History of LGBTQ+
Project Advisors: Tiffany Thompson, Associate Dean of Inclusive Excellence | Paige Jennings, Director of Gender and Sexuality / Women's Resource Center
Project Description: In its 5th year, this project will continue to build on previous progress. The project will centrally document the history of the LGBTQ+ community at Swarthmore College and explore future work to be accomplished.
Project Objectives:
- Review the findings of the last four years and begin to map out a comprehensive and easily accessible multimedia archive that documents the lives and stories of Swarthmore’s LGBTQ+ communities that will build on what already exists at McCabe Library.
- Work to highlight BIPOC trans, and non-binary stories that are more than often erased even within the community.
Power the Narrative Through Art Project: (P9)
Project Advisor: Chandra Moss-Thorne, Senior Lecturer - Dance
Fellows: Anne Hauze ‘27 , Emma Shi ‘28
Project Description: This project’s mission is to examine how art can be used as a form of social justice and to improve representation of artists from marginalized groups. This project will build off the work done over the previous four years. The 24-25 cohort aims to progress efforts in bringing an indigenous artist to campus to creatively honor, through art, the history of the land on which the College sits and the Indigenous people who stewarded it throughout the generations.
Project Objectives:
- Host educational programs that allow the Swarthmore community to engage with different forms of art and artistry, highlighting the history, importance, and/or social impact.
- Identify and implement other creative ways to engage the Swarthmore community to uplift underrepresented artisans.
- Develop informational resources for the Swarthmore community that highlight marginalized influential artists in dance, music, film, art, etc. The information will also focus on how their work has made and/or continues to make an impact on society.
- Choose an underrepresented artist or art-form to focus on monthly and host bi-weekly virtual or in person sessions to discuss the artwork, i.e what the artist was trying to convey, how it was perceived, how it relates to current geo-politcal issues, etc.
- Fellow(s) can also explore monuments/sculptures or architecture that hold significant historical meaning and how people engage or disengage from the symbols
