Jackie Love, Office of Equity and Diversity, IU Southeast

Love wins NAACP Community Award

By Katherine Sears

After nearly 12 years with IU Southeast and more than two years as director of the Office of Equity and Diversity, Jackie Love has made great strides in bringing diversity awareness and education to her campus while increasing diversity in the faculty, staff and student ranks of the campus.

But her work, she said, is far from over. She’s continuing to plan programs designed to instill a sense of experience for students, staff and faculty to help them learn more about diversity. She also works on affirmative action issues that arise in hiring. And she was recently honored with the NAACP’s Community Award for her collaborative work with the organization on racial awareness programs.

Love views her job as a vehicle to help IU Southeast fulfill its mission in preparing students for life beyond their college career.

“The No. 1 focus of my office is to help the campus prepare our students for the real work environment,” she said. “Students are more than likely going to be working with people who do not look like themselves. What a wonderful opportunity we have in higher education to prepare all of our students for what they’re going to be faced with after graduation.”

Some of Love’s program initiatives:

• Diversity Sensitivity Training Workshop—designed to bring small groups of faculty, staff, students and community together to learn about problems that people of different race, religion, ethnic culture and sexual orientation face.

• NETWORK (New Energy to Work Out Racial Kinks)—a chapter from the successful group that has met in Louisville for more than 10 years. People on campus and the general public gather for a monthly luncheon to converse and to listen to an educational presentation pertaining to race relations in the community.

• Racial Issues Dialogue—inspired by President Bill Clinton’s initiative for racial dialogue, this is an intimate session in which people sit and discuss their views about a particular topic concerning racial issues. The session is held every six weeks.

• Film Festivals—noon-time movies with diversity themes, such as Philadelphia, in which a wrongful firing lawsuit is filed by a gay man dying of AIDS. The movies’ themes coincide with national events, such as National Hispanic Month and Native American Month.