Excellence and Inclusion

EWU introduces a welcoming new center for community and collaboration.

For years Kim Davis, the senior director for diversity and inclusion at EWU, envisioned the creation of a safe, welcoming space where campus professionals might come together to learn with, and from, one another. 

Now, thanks in part to $150,000 in funding from the state legislature, that vision is a reality. 

Following its completion in October, EWU’s new Center for Inclusive Excellence has established itself as what Davis has hailed as “a community space to foster and promote faculty and staff professional and personal development in relation to diversity, equity and inclusion.”

The center, located in Showalter Hall, features comfortable seating, a library of books and educational resources, movable tables for meetings and gatherings, a Zoom setup equipped with audio and video, and beautiful art created by EWU student Ryan Van Meter. It will allow the university’s Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to continue to build on services that include reading and affinity groups, trainings, consultations and more.

During its opening ceremony, timed to coincide with the wrap-up of activities observing National Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month, more than 150 members of the Eastern community stopped by to enjoy an open house that included information sharing on the center’s mission, festive decorations and a lunch catered by Cheney’s Arturo’s Mexican Restaurant. 

The event was a perfect way to emphasize the center’s role at Eastern. “The intent is that the center will create a stronger EWU culture through continuous learning, community and collaboration,”
Davis says.