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By Madison Mathews
Johnson City Press
MILLIGAN COLLEGE — As the cultural landscape of Milligan College has changed over the last few years, the school has made many efforts in creating a more culturally diverse campus.
Milligan has hired Ernesto Villarreal as the school’s new director of diversity services, a position that is responsible for “recruiting students of ethnic minority for Milligan, as well as ensuring that the cultural competency at Milligan is at a certain level,” according to Villarreal.
Villarreal is originally from Brownsville, Texas, and recently completed his master’s degree in higher education with an emphasis in student affairs from Abilene Christian University. During his time at ACU, he served with the Office of Multicultural Enrichment, where he worked with city officials, college faculty, staff and students on various multicultural initiatives.
Villarreal hopes to bring a different perspective coming from ACU and to have a better representation from various cultures at Milligan. Having come from ACU, which Villarreal said was very culturally diverse, he also hopes that he can use his experiences to help students have a better understanding of their goals and perspectives.
“It helped broaden my field of vision to not just think from my perspective as a Mexican-American, but think of if I do something how is that going to effect someone from Eastern Europe, someone from Tennessee, someone from Virginia or someone from China. It’s that mentality that helped me change a lot of the stereotypes I had in my head, as well as the initiatives that we have planned out,” he said.
As director of diversity services, Villarreal will lead a number of initiatives for the school, including planning diversity forums, working with the Diversity Advisory Council, help bring in special speakers to Milligan’s chapel program and schedule special events, such as film screenings and panel discussions.
Since starting a number of diversity initiatives within Milligan’s educational program four years ago, vice president for marketing and enrollment management Lee Fierbaugh said the percentage of students from ethnic minority backgrounds has doubled from 6 percent to 12 percent.
“Another focus of the program is to really benefit all the students at Milligan,” she said. “We can help all students through their educational process at Milligan gain a level of intercultural competency in making sure that they are prepared for the global world. If we don’t prepare them for that … I don’t think as an educational institution, especially as a Christian liberal arts college, that we’re really doing what we should be doing.”
Villarreal believes a culturally diverse landscape is vital to the educational system and enriches the complete college experience.
“We are doing an incredible disservice to our students if we don’t prepare them to see, appreciate, and hopefully embrace the cultures around them, because quite frankly, they have something to offer as well,” he said.