"Through excellence in education, we inspire students to discover and pursue their passions, embrace intellectual curiosity and creativity, and lead with confidence." - The Rutgers Preparatory School Mission Statement

A group of RPS faculty began to meet informally in 2016 to identify ways in which we could optimize the benefits our diversity offers our community, since we are a school that celebrates diversity in age, learning styles, race, religion, sexual orientation, culture, geography, and socio-economics. From those initial meetings Advocates for Inclusion and Diversity (AID) was formed.

AID consists of more than 20 faculty with a trio of faculty acting as facilitators. Each of the three facilitators is both a faculty member and an RPS parent. Our approach is not to identify a single individual to “direct” our DEIB programs, but rather we seek to take advantage of the many skill sets, backgrounds, and experience that exist within our community while continuing to partner with extramural practitioners.

RPS continues to utilize a series of curated Professional Development modules to impart our initiatives to our new faculty. These modules are meant to build an approach that focuses on faculty training in the areas of Emotional Intelligence and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and Leadership to form a common foundation from which potentially difficult conversations about DEIB (Diversity/Equity/Inclusion/Belonging) can occur. With our current faculty already having participating in this Professional Development series, our new faculty/staff can take advantage of these modules so that the experience, vocabulary, and involvement remain common to all faculty.

Our intentional and integrated program is designed to support our students with an approach that builds upon SEL and DEIB capacities to support student health and wellness so that our students are seen, known, heard, and valued.