Campus Spotlight: Students Receive First-Ever Award for Diversity and Inclusion

Established this year as a means of recognizing and honoring students, faculty and staff for their efforts aimed at promoting diversity awareness, representation and inclusion within the Rollins workplace and student community, the President’s Award for Diversity and Inclusion is granted annually to a student, faculty and staff member whose contributions and actions over time best exemplify the principles and ideals of diversity and inclusion.

Now in its inaugural year, the award has recently been given to two outstanding members of the Rollins community who are honored for their advancement of diversity awareness, knowledge and skills within the Rollins community, and for the promotion of institutional policies and practices that invite and reinforce inclusiveness. Recipients of this award have served as an advocate for the interests of under-represented populations and have championed diversity representation and intercultural engagement efforts on campus.

This year the Rollins Diversity Council solicited and received nominations from many deserving students, faculty and staff. Following careful deliberation, they recommended two individuals to recognize as this year’s student recipients of the award: Ciera Parks (Class of 2011) and Francesca Masterangelo ('10 Holt).

Ciera Parks is currently a junior, yet since her freshman year, she has demonstrated a commitment to diversity teachings through her involvement in various organizations on campus whose mission it is to educate and create awareness of diversity and social justice. Parks, current president of the Black Student Union, has served as a Camp Alliance (Office of Multicultural Affairs initiative) participant and mentor to incoming students, worked as an intern in the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and was involved in organizing the Multicultural Retreat in 2008… to name just a few of her many accomplishments.

Francesca Masterangelo has worked with a number of campus organizations and projects including the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the women's studies department, WPRK, and the Rollins market. She has exemplified outstanding student leadership around issues of diversity since she arrived at Rollins in 2007, serving as President for Voices for Women and as the co-founder of the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP). In both groups, her dynamic leadership style, her unbounded energy, her professionalism, and her creative event planning have raised consciousness among students, faculty, and staff on our campus.