Saginaw Valley State University received an award this week for its commitment to diversity and inclusion.
The university was one of 95 institutions given a Higher Education Excellence in Diversity award by the INSIGHT Into Diversity Magazine.
According to a spokesperson the award honors the university, in part, for its commitment to having dialogues around race, culture, and stereotypes.
Mamie Thorns is with SVSU.
“We have been doing this past year a series of cultural competence dialogues. We had close to 24 different dialogues that we offered to our faculty staff and students this year.”
Thorns says the conversations have included lectures on things like “eliminating microaggressions” and “unconscious bias.”
She said the University is also working to increase diversity recruitment and retention.
According to SVSU’s office of institutional research, the student body has become more white since 2015 - though is more diverse compared to 2010.