The University of New Mexico's Division for Equity and Inclusion (DEI) welcomes several new additions to the staff for the FY21 academic year. Professors Nancy López and Elizabeth Quay Hutchison will join DEI as Associate Vice Presidents while Mónica Jenrette will serve as a Programmer/Analyst.

Nancy Lopez
Nancy López

López will work with Vice President of Equity and Inclusion Assata Zerai to promote a campus culture in which students are welcome and supported and assure that the success of all students is a priority across all levels of the campus community. This will involve overseeing a wide range of responsibilities and special initiatives of institutional importance to create, maintain, oversee, and assess a high-level of centralized, comprehensive, bold and imaginative initiatives (curricular and co-curricular innovations) that promote and foster diversity, academic inclusive excellence, and an inclusive climate from enrollment to commencement with an emphasis on underrepresented racial/ethnic minority (URM), vulnerable, and transfer student populations.

Elizabeth Hutchison
Elizabeth Quay Hutchison

Hutchison will work to improve UNM’s ​capacity to support faculty and staff who are targets of (or witnesses to) harassment, threats, bullying, and violence​. Such behaviors, which are more frequently experienced by women​, sexual minorities, and/or members of URM groups, violate federal and state laws as well as university policies, undermining the university’s commitment to equity as well as ​its teaching and research missions. Further, she will ​continue to lead ​UNM's participation in the NASEM Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education (2019-2023).

At UNM Hutchison has served extensively in faculty governance, and in 2016 co-founded Faculty for a Sexual Assault-Free Environment at UNM (Faculty SAFE), an organization that channels faculty involvement to promote policy changes, strengthen support and advocacy, and advance research on campus sexual violence at UNM. This work has allowed Hutchison to collaborate with faculty, staff, students, and administrators on initiatives to support targets of sexual harassment, including the Presidential Task Force on Reporting Sexual Misconduct and Harassment and Supporting the UNM Community.

Monica Jenrette
Mónica Jenrette

Jenrette also joins the staff and will provide data and assessment support for DEI. Jenrette will assist the VPEI in securing, analyzing and creating visualizations from relevant sources to assist DEI in amplifying UNM’s mission and impact and driving a strategic path towards the transformation of UNM. Jenrette will further lead efforts to assess the work of DEI, including the LGBTQ-Resource Center, the Men of Color Initiative, and the Institute for the Study of “Race” and Social Justice and related units. 

“We are pleased to welcome Drs. López and Hutchison and Ms. Jenrette to the DEI team,” said Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Assata Zerai. “They bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to DEI and with their support we hope to continue our efforts to imbed diversity, equity and inclusion throughout the university.”

Together, along with the rest of the staff including Zerai, Blanco-Silva, Mx. Frankie Flores, Rodney Bowe and Scott Haskie, their goal is to advance excellence-and-equity across all dimensions of the academic mission, culture, and climate in ways that improve opportunities for all of New Mexico’s residents, and UNM’s students, staff, and faculty.

For more information on the staff and their efforts, visit DEI staff.