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Community College of Vermont highlights multilingual supports, staff survey and outreach at DEI committee meeting
Summary
CCV leaders told the Vermont State Colleges board DEI committee that the college is expanding multilingual supports, saw high positive results on a spring staff DEI survey and held a 22nd International Food Festival, while seeking ways to sustain DEI work amid national polarization.
Mary Broski, dean of people at the Community College of Vermont, told the Vermont State Colleges Board of Trustees’ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee on May 12 that CCV is expanding multilingual supports, delivering a staff DEI survey with largely positive results and hosting community outreach events.
Broski said CCV hired a multilingual teaching-and-learning coordinator last fall who has worked with faculty and workforce partners to create an English-for-healthcare course and to build an on-ramp for multilingual learners into college coursework. “She actually helped create a curriculum … an English course specifically for health care professionals,” Broski said.
The college also ran its 22nd International Food Festival in April and drew about 50 attendees from students, faculty, staff and the community. Broski said the event received positive local press. She reported that CCV’s spring staff DEI survey — run biannually — had an 85 percent participation rate in the prior cycle and, this spring, strong positive responses above 92 percent to questions about whether CCV offers educational opportunities that promote DEI and whether people felt respected.
Broski described attendance at an external Vermont Business for Social Responsibility session and a StoryCorps–based “One Small Step” moderated conversation that brought together people with differing political views; she said the approach inspired ideas for facilitating civil dialogue on campus. “It really is just communication,” she told the committee.
Trustees and committee liaisons responded with praise and suggested CCV explore ways to scale such dialogues, share the restaurant-based “I’m Vermont 2” exhibit described by a trustee, and continue cross-campus coordination with Vermont State University colleagues.
The presentation was delivered as an informational update; no committee votes or formal actions were taken. The committee invited Broski to return for future meetings and encouraged continued cross-institution collaboration on DEI programming.
Ending: Broski said CCV staff and faculty continue DEI work across CCV’s statewide centers and that the college will keep benchmarking progress through the biannual staff survey. Trustees encouraged continued sharing of activities and resources across the Vermont State Colleges system.
