Nearly 70 Wabash College administrators, faculty, staff, alumni, and students spent six hours Thursday night discussing ways to improve the College’s diversity and inclusion.

A diversity and inclusion workshop led by IBM executives Rob Shook ’83 and Bill Kirst produced hundreds of ideas. An evening of discussion led to five recommendations on ways to make Wabash a more diverse campus.

Building a Campus or Student Center, increasing diversity on the College website, broadening recruitment demographics, adding diversity programing to orientation, and more international recruitment were the five most important ideas.

The evening started with a flood of ideas when Shook asked everyone to write down any idea that could improve diversity and inclusion at Wabash College. Participants used sticky notes to categorize the ideas which were then prioritized.

After group discussion flushing out details on some of the ideas participants voted on the most important leading to the final five recommendations.

The evening concluded with President White thanking the participants and the efforts of Shook and Kirst, who have led similar workshops on other college campuses and for private industry.

“We live in a large world and these ideas are important,” the President said. “These are ideas we should all be thinking about.”

The President also cautioned that diversity remains critically important but it’s but “one task to accomplish” for Wabash College.