When Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University, attended the school as an undergraduate, it was a predominantly White institution. Now, the Washington D.C. Catholic women’s college is about 65% Black and 30% Latina.
“Trinity is a model of change,” McGuire said. “We had to go through a deep, deep change process in order to become the institution we are today.”
Now, the school is pursuing further changes to serve its diverse student body. Last month, Trinity Washington University launched Trinity DARE: Driving Actions for Racial Equity, a five-pronged plan to address systemic inequalities as an institution.
The stated goals of the program include widening career pipelines, broadening access, employing inclusive excellence pedagogy and practices, conducting research and promoting education on racial inequities and engaging in a self-examination process as a university. Each goal encompasses a list of action items.
“I think this initiative can have a major impact, especially right now with everything being exposed, in terms of what some of us already knew, in terms of disparities by race and ethnicity,” said Dr. Cynthia Greer, an associate professor of counseling at Trinity Washington University whose research focuses on racial inequities in children’s mental health.
The inequalities laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic and antiracist protests this summer weren’t a new discovery for a school like Trinity Washington. About 80% of full-time undergraduates are Pell Grant recipients, while students’ median family income hovers around $25,000 to $30,000 a year.
McGuire argued that to close national racial gaps, these are the students that need to be invested in, and that’s what Trinity DARE is ultimately about.
