AWARD-WINNING PROFESSOR BRINGS INCLUSIVE EDUCATION TO UNIVERSITY

As Sacred Heart University’s (SHU) new director of inclusive excellence education, Mark Congdon Jr., will further his efforts preparing the SHU community to increase diversity competencies in an increasingly diverse world.

Congdon, an assistant professor in the communication and media department, has already been working diligently to foster inclusivity. He has spent two years on SHU’s Inclusive Excellence Advisory Council, which advocates for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, and he is among the first cohort of inclusive excellence fellows, who are dedicated to driving the university forward in expanding its culture of acceptance.

As an educator, he has connected SHU with the local community to address a range of social issues. He worked with his students to create SHU’s Uniting Hearts initiative, which leads projects that promote allyship on and off campus around social justice matters. In November he will travel to Rome to accept the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities’ 2024 Uniservitate Global Service-Learning Award for the initiative.

His new responsibilities include supervising the creation and implementation of the Academy for Inclusive Excellence Education and Development. He will work closely with the Bias Education Support Team, the inclusive excellence fellows, members of the Office for Inclusive Excellence team and other SHU campus partners to finish producing the academy’s curricula, which will launch as a suite of education and development workshops that will be available for faculty, staff and student tracks.

“Mark was selected because of his consistent commitment to inclusive excellence education and its application in teaching, service learning and more,” said Maurice Nelson, SHU’s chief diversity and inclusion officer.

SHU is located in Fairfield, Connecticut.