Utah State University President Noelle Cockett addresses diversity, other issues at State of the University address

Utah State University President Noelle E. Cockett addressed the university with a focus on increasing diversity at the annual “State of the University” address Tuesday morning.

Cockett first brought up the topic of diversity by mentioning the 2019-20 school year theme: The Year of the Woman.

“The Year of the Woman has two objectives,” Cockett said. “The first is to help celebrate important anniversaries in the suffrage movement. The second objective is to simply celebrate women.”

Cockett then addressed inclusiveness, respect and diversity.

“It’s not just diversity,” Cockett said. “We need to support this concept through inclusion and respect all across our community.”

Cockett introduced the Inclusive Excellence Symposium, a program with a goal of reaching out to people of all races. She said the theme of the program is “disrupt.”

“It’s this concept of ‘we need to have the hard conversations to be able to move forward,’” Cockett explained.

Jay Wright, the associate vice president for USU marketing, attended the address and was excited about the diversity campaigns.

“I’m excited to see that there’s a set of tangible goals and priorities that are written out for everyone to know about and we can all unite around it,” Wright said. “I’m excited to see the university have a direction that they’re gonna go in under President Cockett and we can move forward united to start achieving all these things.”

Aubree Thomas, who works in the marketing office at the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, felt the diversity campaigns were a “good focus for the university.”

Thomas also mentioned her interest in The Year of the Woman.

“I haven’t seen any other university doing something like this before,” Thomas said. “I think it’ll be cool to see what the different departments and campuses come up with to celebrate The Year of the Woman.”