Georgia Institute of Technology has received the 2020 Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, one of the oldest and largest diversity-focused publications in higher education. As a recipient of the annual HEED Award — a national honor recognizing colleges and universities that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion — Georgia Tech will be featured along with 89 other recipients in the magazine's November 2020 issue.

This is the seventh consecutive year the Institute has been named a HEED Award recipient.

“Our diversity and inclusion core values support our vision for building and sustaining an inclusive and welcoming community,” said Archie Ervin, vice president for Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (IDEI). “In the years ahead, these values will also undergird our commitment to ensuring success for all our students, staff, and faculty so they can thrive and succeed unimpeded by social barriers.”

Open to all colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, the award measures an institution’s level of achievement and intensity of commitment in regard to broadening diversity and inclusion on campus through initiatives, programs, and outreach; student recruitment, retention, and completion; and hiring practices for faculty and staff.

The HEED Award announcement comes on the heels of Tech’s enrollment of a record number of first-year, transfer, and dual-enrollment students this fall and IDEI’s creation of Diversity and Inclusion Education and Training earlier this year to lead a broad range of education and training focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion for the campus community.

"The HEED Award process consists of a comprehensive and rigorous application that includes questions relating to the recruitment and retention of students and employees — and best practices for both — continued leadership support for diversity, and other aspects of campus diversity and inclusion," said Lenore Pearlstein, co-publisher of INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine. "As we continue to see a record number of HEED Award applicants each year, nearly every school tells us they use the application itself as a tool to create new programs and to benchmark their accomplishments across campus. The process allows them to reflect on their successes and also determine where more work needs to be done. We also continue to raise the standards in selecting HEED institutions."

To learn more and for a full listing of 2020 HEED Award recipients, visit https://www.insightintodiversity.com/about-the-heed-award/2020-recipients/.