The Office of University Diversity and Inclusion (OUDI) will move to the University Personnel division, President Jeffrey Armstrong announced in a campuswide email Friday morning. The restructuring will eliminate OUDI as a standalone entity.
The email stated the decision aims to consolidate resources and expand its reach across the university while maintaining the goal of inclusivity. Armstrong wrote the move will benefit campus community members “regardless of circumstances and conditions outside of the university’s control.”
OUDI’s restructuring comes at the heels of President Trump’s executive order to eliminate federal DEI programs. This order prompted the US Department of Education to disband its Diversity & Inclusion Council and place its DEI staff on paid administrative leave.
The restructuring decision was made by university leadership alone and “not in response to any outside influences,” University Spokesperson Matt Lazier wrote in an email to Mustang News.
Lazier wrote that similar decisions to combine campus entities are made “over time with careful consideration,” but could not provide a timeline for this rearrangement.
Students and staff involved in DEI initiatives around campus have had little time to unpack this announcement.
Cristian Reyes, a higher education counseling and student affairs graduate student and the 2023-2024 inaugural ASI secretary of Diversity and Inclusion, said he learned of this decision at the time of the campuswide email.
“I think OUDI in particular means a lot to me because I was a student assistant there, so I worked with the individuals who are being impacted by this decision,” Reyes said. “They’re the few administrators of color that I know are doing this amazing work and now power will be stripped away from them into a different division.”
Cal Poly leadership has ten divisions. University Personnel now houses the Human Resources department, and will add OUDI, thereby eliminating the University Office of Diversity and Inclusion division.
OUDI creates initiatives to cultivate an inclusive campus environment “where each individual feels valued, supported, and empowered,” according to their mission statement. This is separate from Student Diversity and Belonging, an entity under the Student Affairs division, which hosts the eight campus resources centers geared to underrepresented communities.
Denise Isom led OUDI as the Interim Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion since July 2020. Isom will finish her term in this role and as the university’s Senior Diversity Officer until June 2025, according to an internal email from OUDI’s Associate Vice President of DEI Strategic Planning and Networks Beya Makekau. All other OUDI staff positions will remain until further notice.
With the addition of OUDI, the University Personnel division will be renamed, according to Armstrong’s email.
Al Liddicoat will lead the new University Personnel division after completing his term as interim Vice Chancellor for Human Resources for the Cal State Chancellor’s council. Liddicoat held many roles at Cal Poly; he started as an electrical engineering professor, interim dean for OCOB and the Vice President for University Personnel and Chief Human Resources Officer.
Regardless of how this decision pans out, Makekau reassured members of the Diversity Partners Network via email that the nature of their work will persist.
“The work of advancing DEI is not confined to a single office or division, it is woven into the fabric of who we are,” Makekau said. “Each of you are essential collaborators and change agents in this community and as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, it is in this truth that ‘we can hew out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope.’ ”