UWS Hires Diversity And Inclusion Director

The University of Wisconsin-Superior has created a new position to promote diversity and inclusion between students and faculty on campus.

Jerel Benton has been hired as the director of equity, diversity and inclusion. Benton said he wants to help UWS welcome people from all different backgrounds whether it’s people of color or members of the LGBT community. Benton said he plans to work with student services to promote inclusion at UW-Superior.

“We want to contribute to the student understanding and connectivity and ethos, for a lack of a better word, towards their personal culture,” he said. “So for individuals to really embrace their identities and own them and not to be ashamed of them, but to really use their identities to be able to educate other people on campus.”

Benton said it’s an important position for all university campuses.

“Because we live in a global society. And, specifically to UWS, when we are talking about students within the region that come from predominantly white areas, they never experience different cultures except for what they have seen on TV or things of that nature,” he said. “It gives them the opportunity to embrace and learn about those different cultures.”

Benton was the director of African American Affairs at Minnesota State University in Mankato before coming to UW-Superior. He said they’ll be creating an equity, diversity and inclusion program on campus this spring with the hopes of rolling it out in the fall.