Graduate Student Supports DEIA Initiatives, Awareness Across Campus

A graduate student who led diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) awareness initiatives at her undergraduate alma mater is now helping to advance Syracuse University’s DEIA objectives through her role in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI).  

Carlee Kerr, who is in her first year in the School of Education’s higher education master’s program, serves as a graduate assistant in ODI. She helps with strategy, program planning, event logistics and other hands-on activities that increase awareness and promote DEIA objectives among students, faculty and staff. Those initiatives are a critical component of the University’s new academic strategic plan, “Leading With Distinction.”   

Before coming to Syracuse, Kerr earned undergraduate degrees in history and gender and women’s studies at the University of Rhode Island, where she was one of the co-creators of Diversity Dialogues, a student-led initiative offering dialogue-based workshops on DEIA and social justice. For her work on the initiative, Kerr earned a schoolwide student leadership award.  

 We talked with Kerr about her undergraduate diversity activism, her current role and her future career interests.