(Media release from Georgia Highlands College):
Georgia Highlands College (GHC) has been selected to host a Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) Campus Center by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U).
GHC joins 16 other colleges throughout the country joining the network. Currently 3 private colleges in Georgia have been selected. GHC is the first college chosen in the University System of Georgia.
“We’re thrilled to partner with this new cohort of host institutions,” said AAC&U President Lynn Pasquerella, “and we look forward to supporting their vital efforts to promote racial equity and healing on their campuses, in their communities, and through the fast-growing network of TRHT Campus Centers around the country.”
Beginning with the inaugural cohort of TRHT Campus Centers at 10 AAC&U member institutions in 2017, the TRHT Campus Centers effort has grown into a dynamic and diverse network of host institutions, including community colleges, liberal arts colleges, HBCUs, minority-serving institutions, faith-based institutions, and large research universities. The new centers announced today bring the total number of TRHT Campus Centers to 71, continuing momentum toward AAC&U’s goal of establishing at least 150 self-sustaining, community-integrated TRHT Campus Centers at higher education institutions nationwide.
“As the network of TRHT Campus Centers expands, we remain humbled and dedicated to achieving our shared goals with our institutional partners. Doing the work of truth, racial healing, and transformation has been, and continues to be, a great challenge and a privilege,” said Tia McNair, AAC&U Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Student Success and Executive Director for the TRHT Campus Centers.
TRHT Campus Centers play a vital role in the national TRHT effort to address historical and contemporary effects of racism by building sustainable capacity to promote deep, transformational change. With the shared goal of preparing the next generation of leaders and thinkers to build equitable and just communities by dismantling the false belief in a hierarchy of human value, each campus center uses the TRHT framework to implement its own visionary action plan for creating new narratives about race in their communities and promoting racial healing and relationship building through campus-community engagement.
At the annual AAC&U Institute on Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Campus Centers, teams from institutions interested in hosting a TRHT Campus Center and teams from existing host institutions work with the guidance of mentors to develop action plans that support their visions of what their campuses and communities will look, feel, and be like when there is no longer a false belief in a hierarchy of human value. Held each June, the TRHT Institute is central to building the capacity of new and existing centers to further the vision of the national TRHT movement. Applications for the next TRHT Institute will open in winter 2023.
