Penn Graduate School of Education professor Janine Remillard will serve in a new associate dean position focused on community and climate.
The Associate Dean for Community, Climate, and Doctoral Education role represents a reinvention of the school’s former Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion leadership position, according to GSE Dean Katharine Strunk. In a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian, Remillard wrote that she seeks to foster a supportive environment and improve teaching quality as part of the role.
“Community and climate are at the heart of everything we do at Penn GSE — from our research to our partnerships across Philadelphia and around the world,” Strunk wrote to the DP.
She added that the school’s Committee on Community and Climate gathered feedback from the school and recommended that community, climate, and doctoral education needed to be elevated to the senior leadership level to “ensure the infrastructure to support it.”
Remillard similarly wrote that the committee’s work made it evident that “fostering community is ongoing work” and “requires intentional stewardship.” According to Remillard, the need for guidance was due to the “harmful effects of the rhetoric and policies” across the country, which Penn is “not immune to.”
Last January, President and 1968 Wharton graduate Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring universities that receive federal funding — such as Penn — to terminate any DEI programs that could be in violation of federal civil rights laws.
A month later, Penn’s Graduate School of Education scrubbed its website of references to DEI, making it the last of Penn’s 12 graduate schools to do so.
The previous webpage, which once read “Penn GSE’s Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion,” is now deactivated.
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Prior to its deactivation, the site contained demographic statistics reporting the race and gender of GSE faculty and staff. The webpage also included information about the “GSE Action Plan for Faculty Diversity,” the school’s plan to maintain diverse hiring practices.
Raquel Arredondo, who previously served as the assistant dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion, was later listed in the faculty directory as the Assistant Dean of Climate and Community. This year, Arredondo — who has since left Penn — attended a national conference in Philadelphia to discuss the future of DEI in higher education.
In nearly 30 years at Penn, Remillard has held numerous senior leadership positions at GSE. From 2017 to 2023, she was the founding director of the Collaboratory for Teacher Education, which aims to “elevate the status of, respect for, and interest in the teaching profession.”
Remillard added that her role is deeply connected to GSE’s identity.
“As a school of education and a community of educators, GSE seeks to nurture an institutional culture where everyone feels a genuine sense of belonging — valued for who they are and what they bring to teaching, learning, and research,” Remillard wrote.
She added that the office’s three areas of focus — community and climate, doctoral education, and teaching quality — should not be viewed as separate initiatives, but “emerge from a unified commitment to furthering education as a humane and democratic endeavor.”
Remillard wrote that her office plans to start by “gathering input from our community.”
“The initiatives we launch will present opportunities for faculty, staff, and students to come together around our core commitments and to play a role in accomplishing our mission,” she wrote.
GSE was not the only school to undergo changes in response to the federal government’s sweeping reforms. Each of Penn’s four undergraduate and 12 graduate schools took steps to revise DEI references, while the University scrubbed its own central website.
