February 20, 2018

TO: The Bennington Community
FR: Mariko Silver, President

It is my pleasure to announce that Delia Saenz has been appointed Vice President for Institutional Inclusion, Equity, and Leadership Development. She will join us in her new role on July 1, 2018.

Delia will be a familiar face to many. She served as an external reviewer for the Society, Culture, and Thought discipline group review in Spring 2014 and returned to the College in Spring 2017 to teach a module on leadership and conduct workshops for faculty and staff on navigating change and community building. 

In her new role, Delia will be overseeing and coordinating the College's efforts to promote inclusivity broadly across the institution, engaging all constituencies in practices that will advance an inclusive campus climate, foster the development of an expansive global perspective, and cultivate within the campus community the knowledge and skills needed to effectively engage and collaborate across differences. Her role will extend beyond the campus boundaries, and will include engagement with alumni, community members, and partner academic institutions. She will also teach one course per year. 

Delia brings to Bennington a wealth of experience in the the areas of diversity and inclusion–both as an administrator and scholar. She joins us from Arizona State University, where she has been Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Vice Provost for International and Institutional Inclusion, and, most recently, the director of diversity and inclusion for two multi-university engineering research centers: Quantum Energy & Sustainable Solar Technologies, and the Center for Biomediated and Bioinspired Geotechnics. 

A member of the ASU faculty in the Department of Psychology and in the Hispanic Research Center at ASU, Delia received her doctorate in social psychology from Princeton University. Her scholarly research focuses on diversity, tokenism, intergroup processes, inclusion, acculturation, and sustainability. This work, often cited for its innovation and contributions to the understanding of diversity in groups, has been funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, the Ford and WT Grant Foundations, the US Department of Energy, and the US Agency for International Development. Her recent work has centered on broadening the participation of women and people of color in STEM. She served as co-PI on Vocational Training and Education for Clean Energy (VOCTEC), a project focused on enhancing knowledge, awareness, and capacity-building in renewable energy technologies among developing nations. 

I look forward to working with Delia, as I know we all will, in shaping and implementing programs and priorities that will in turn work to shape our shared community into a model of inclusivity, accountability, and continued forward progress.