Chief diversity officer: Embrace diversity, open your minds

“Welcome” first-year students and “welcome back” returning students to Auburn University. The Auburn Family represents a diverse community brought together by a shared commitment to create and advance knowledge. 

Our campus prides itself on creating an environment that is welcoming and supportive for every person here. We are a university with strong academic programs, a culture of student involvementF and great campus traditions.

Auburn offers a quality education to talented and motivated undergraduate and graduate students from throughout the state of Alabama, the nation and the world. While it is the place you will spend considerable time learning in classrooms, labs and co-curricular spaces, it is also a campus community that you will call home for the next few years of your lives.

Your journey as an undergraduate student marks an important point in your developmental cycle as a human being. The time you spend at Auburn pursuing your academic endeavors will play an important part in your future career trajectory. 

The energy you invest in building friendships, engaging with campus organizations and forging relationships with your peers, your professors and leaders across campus will influence your life trajectory. 

Auburn University will serve as a developmental incubator providing you with an array of experiences that will further shape your character, influence your leadership and prepare you as a critical thinker, a problem solver and a culturally competent individual with knowledge and practical skills to contribute to communities locally and globally. 

Auburn will also be a launch pad to propel you into the world to accomplish your personal and professional aspirations and have meaningful impact. The opportunity to attend a university should be a cherished one and what you choose to make of it will determine what it can make of you.

As you explore the campus during this academic year, open yourself to learning about and understanding the experiences of those around you. A university setting is one of a few spaces where students and faculty from a variety of different backgrounds, countries, cultures, interests and lived experiences are assembled together in a commonplace toward the common purpose of learning.

It’s part of what makes universities so special.

Expect to encounter people who are different from you. Expect to be exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking. Feel empowered to engage these new ideas by sharing your own ideas and thoughts with others as well. Recognize that we often “learn the most from those with whom we have the least in common.” 

Embrace diversity as an important aspect of your opportunities for learning at Auburn. Also, recognize that in the midst of our rich diversity lies meaning in the common bond that connects us as part of the Auburn Family.

Auburn is proud of its public, land-grant mission, which commits us to being a university with global impact, while also serving the needs of this state. Please know that you, as Auburn students, are our greatest asset. 

My hope is that, as you begin this semester, you will engage in opportunities that fully prepare you to successfully navigate our increasingly diverse society and global economy.

Welcome to Auburn and best wishes for an outstanding, impactful academic year.