Diversity and Inclusion

Warm 2024-2025 greetings from the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine. Here, we champion diversity as our strength and believe that it is our energy source for innovation and brilliance. Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine was founded with the mission to diversify the physician workforce in efforts to combat health inequities in 2013. Over the past eleven years our leaders, students, faculty, and staff have worked tirelessly to cultivate a culture of excellence by intentionally incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion into our everyday best practices, policies, and procedures throughout our campus, in and out of the lectures and labs. We are cognizant of and careful with the fact that there is a responsibility that comes with curating learning and working spaces for diverse talents. That responsibility is to provide sociologically safe conditions where those diverse intellectual and social talents can thrive because they feel comfortable engaging in and contributing to their environment which fosters an organic sense of belonging.

We know that diversity and inclusion is not just about who we are, it governs how we operate in our vision, how we carry out our mission, and how we exercise our guiding principles daily. We understand that what we do is who we are. As a core tenet, diversity and inclusion is everyone’s responsibility as an individual and as a collective. Recognizing and amplifying the myriad of learned and lived experiences represented in our halls is what makes our campus culture rich and rewarding.

Collectively, we ensure that DEI is not only identified as part of what we value but we strive to expand those values into actionable virtues, demonstrated in our college’s personality… our culture. Although we are a single-degree college, we have over 50 student organizations where students relish in an experience an additional sense of satisfaction and success. Our student doctors flourish in these active outlets for the community outside of the classroom, and take advantage of the opportunity to share their cultures, religions, and lived experiences with the campus which in turn contributes to them being more culturally competent future physicians. Also, our leaders and employees champion our DEI efforts as evidenced by our hiring practices, training, curriculum, and work environment. When recruiting employees and students, we go beyond looking for those who are a good fit, we look for those who add value which further demonstrates our commitment to evolution and relevancy for our employees and students to benefit from the innovation that diversity organically produces.

We have been awarded the Higher Educational Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award for the past two consecutive years. This is an accolade that signals Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine as an innovative and pioneering medical school that continuously works to seamlessly weave DEI into our fabric of excellence. This national recognition is an honorable vote of confidence that serves as encouragement and support to our students and stakeholders as an external acknowledgment of our efforts and accomplishments. We all learn out loud and together as we value helping each other and gleaning from one another. As CDO and Ombudsman, the student and employee experience is a priority to me and I invite you to join us.