CC Earns Second HEED Award, New CDO Looks Ahead – The Peak – Colorado College News

Alexa Gromko
For the second year in a row, CC has won a Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine. The award is given to higher ed institutions that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and comes after years of hard work put forth through an institutional commitment to antiracism and a focus on social mobility and access.  
“We know we’ve done a lot of hard work institutionally for equity and justice since 2019, but we can often be focused on what we haven’t yet accomplished,” says Chief Diversity Officer Rosalie Rodriguez. “To have an external body say, ‘you’re doing great and you’re continuing to do great year after year,’ that gives us a catalyst to do more.” 
Rodriguez is the champion behind CC’s pursuit of the HEED Award and the architect behind several initiatives that center diversity on campus, including the HAVEN Initiative, which allows transfer students an opportunity to come to CC from states that have passed anti-DEI legislation. 
Rodriguez has been one of three key figures in CC’s ADEI team, Institutional Equity & Belonging. She was named CC’s Chief Diversity Officer this past summer after a national search and says it’s her job to make sure the College continues the momentum that’s been built over the past five years.  
“I don’t want people to think we’ve lost something or went from a three to a one-person model,” says Rodriguez. “In fact, we’ve simply reorganized.”
The department currently has two open positions that will collaborate with Rodriguez: Associate Vice President of Institutional Equity & Belonging and Director of Belonging & Engagement. These individuals will create support and resources that uplift and connect people across campus and the wider community. One goal is to create affinity groups for faculty and staff on campus and connect them to the broader Pikes Peak region and other colleges and universities.
There’s also a strategic plan, The Strategy for a More Just CC, which Rodriguez says is, “a map with guides, goals, and metrics to understand where we are and how to get where we’re going. The metrics give us identifiable ways to know how or if this work is impacting our community.” The metrics also help to examine the questions that keep Rodriguez up at night: Do our people have a sense of belonging? Are our policies equitable? Are we all equipped to think critically about the issues that really matter?  
“My goal is to help people create a tapestry from the many vibrant threads that exist across divisions,” Rodriguez says. “I want us to develop a collective understanding and language to address ADEI and know how our work is connected.” 
To unify and elevate, Rodriguez is focused on building capacity to understand and act as a community, better connect to and support each other, and building equitable systems and policies. Elevation includes bringing attention to work that’s already underway but should be centered as part of our commitment to antiracism, like developing sense of place and allowing it to guide us in our obligations to the region, its people, and its land.  
“Understanding CC’s history, especially as we celebrate 150 years, mandates that we tell a fuller history about a founding that predates the state of Colorado by two years, in a region that was once Mexico and Spain and has been and continues to be home to many indigenous nations including the Ute Mountain Ute, Arapaho, Comanche, and Navajo.” 
“Sometimes I say I landed in this work accidentally, but I don’t know if there’s been a better accident,” says Rodriguez. Growing up in New York with Puerto Rican and Italian heritage, she felt a shared experience with those around her who had strong connections to their ethnic heritage regardless of race. She said that disappeared when she attended a small rural college in Pennsylvania, where she was one of two people of color in her graduating class.  
“It got me thinking about the ways in which people’s identity becomes erased,” she says. “I became an anomaly to my classmates at Juniata College.  ‘Rodriguez? You’re not from around here, are you?’ they said. There were a lot of things that I didn’t think about as being central to my identity until I experienced other people who did not understand their own heritage and history.”  
Rodriguez planned to become a scientist and worked in a molecular biochemistry lab as an undergraduate until she joined a multicultural organization on campus, became its president, and led workshops. After she graduated, Rodriguez was hired to help recruit students of color to campus. From there, she became the Special Assistant to the President for Diversity and Inclusion and over the course of 13 years, she started a mentoring program, taught classes in cultural analysis and community development, created new study abroad opportunities, revised hiring practices, and co-founded a professional organization for DEI practitioners across the state. She’s now been working in the equity and belonging space for 25 years, with the last four years at CC. 
“And this is the first time I’ve felt I was home,” she says. “My family is in New York, but I have shifted to wanting my family to move here. I feel like I belong here. The way I want to approach this work is to transform a culture, not just tinker around the edges.” 
Rodriguez says it’s important for her to be part of a community with a shared vision. “I know the rest of the campus is aligned with this work. This is an opportunity to help bring people into deeper conversations with each other to discuss how we do it. I will provide the resources to make sure its sustainable long term, so that we know what this project going to look like 10-15 years from now.”  
She’s creating a cross-divisional leadership model, bringing together those who have a responsibility in different aspects of this work from compliance, to teaching, to programming, to athletics. This group will provide resources for each other and bring their specialized lens to policies and procedures.  
“I’m excited and couldn’t be more thrilled,” Rodriguez says. “We can do a lot of important transformative work here and I think a lot of other institutions are envious. The HEED Awards are just the beginning. It’s important to celebrate all the wins because they energize us and propel us forward. That’s the philosophy of any civil rights movement in this country. Over long periods of time, when you look back, we were winning a lot of battles for a larger cause.”
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CC recognizes and honors the original inhabitants who first settled in the area and who called the nearby highest mountain Tava, the original name given by the Ute people to what is now known as Pikes Peak. At CC, we respect all peoples and strive to grow as a unique and welcoming community.
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