Launching the Center for Inclusive Education and Scholarship

The Center for Inclusive Education and Scholarship was launched in January 2019. It was created to provide a space for programs which serve to engage and retain students from various backgrounds, including those from historically underserved and underrepresented backgrounds. We are a small team with big goals and a lot of passion for the work we do.

Our vision for the center is simply "Empowering a community of scholars." Our hope is that students will complete the sentence with whatever is relevant for them. It may be leadership or giving back or any multitude of statements.

Not only do we want to ensure we are able to serve our students, we also want to empower them to be advocates for themselves and their communities.

The foundation for the center is the life cycle of the Drexel student. We start with pre-college programs to get students in middle and high school thinking about college. We then move into Dragon Scholars, our bridge program for incoming Drexel students. Historically, our focus has been on the first-year transition, which is still a very important aspect of the center. We are going to build more intentional support for our upper-division students to help them with their professional development and plans post-graduation.

The students are the center of everything we do. One of our priorities this upcoming year as we continue to build the center is to hear the student voice. Not only do we want to ensure we are able to serve our students, we also want to empower them to be advocates for themselves and their communities.

We have some great events planned for this upcoming academic year, many of which we will partner with other departments on campus to host. For more information about the center and to be added to our email list, please send a message to iedscholar@drexel.edu.