Diversity Statement Examples

4 Tips for a Strong Diversity Statement

1. Answer the question the application actually asks

Prompts vary a lot, and they have changed in the last few years. Many universities have stopped requiring diversity statements. The University of California, for example, ended its requirement for faculty hiring in March 2025. Some schools now ask instead for a statement on mentoring, student success or community engagement. Read the prompt closely and answer that question, in those terms.

2. Write about what you have done

Committees want evidence, not values alone. A mentoring program you started, a course you redesigned so more students could succeed, or outreach you kept up for years tells them far more than a paragraph about why inclusion matters.

3. Connect it to the job or program

For a faculty job, cover teaching, mentoring, research and service, and say what you would do at that institution. For graduate school or law school, explain what you would bring to the program and how your experience shapes your goals.

4. Be specific and plain

Avoid jargon and broad claims. Use your own experience where it is relevant and you are comfortable sharing it, but you don't have to share personal identity details to write a strong statement. Your actions are the core of it.

6 Diversity Statement Examples

Here are six examples: three for faculty jobs, one written for a student success prompt, one for a PhD application and one for law school. Each is followed by a short note on what it does well. Faculty statements often run one to two pages, so these are condensed.

We wrote these six ourselves as teaching models. The applicants are invented, the schools are left generic on purpose, and nothing here is a real client's statement.

Example 1 (Mechanical engineering, faculty position): Building a pipeline into research

When I joined my PhD lab, I was the first person in my family to go to graduate school, and I spent most of my first year pretending I knew things I didn't. Nobody had told me what a conference was for, or that you could ask a professor to read a draft. I eventually learned, mostly by asking the lab manager questions I was embarrassed to ask anyone else.

That experience shaped how I run research with students. In my postdoc I started a summer research program for students from [State]'s community colleges, most of whom had never been inside a university lab. Over three summers, 14 students spent ten weeks each in our department. I paired each one with a graduate mentor, held weekly sessions on the parts of research nobody explains, like reading a paper or writing an email to a professor, and ended each summer with a poster session open to their families. Nine of the fourteen have since transferred to four-year engineering programs.

In the classroom, I post worked solutions to every homework problem after the due date, hold office hours at varied times for students who work, and use short anonymous surveys twice a semester to find out what isn't working.

At [University], I would like to expand this kind of program in partnership with the local community colleges, and to bring summer students into my lab from the first year.

What works here:

• The personal opening is short and leads straight to a specific lesson about what students don't get told.
• The summer program has numbers a committee can weigh: 14 students, three summers, nine transfers.
• Small classroom practices show the commitment extends to everyday teaching.
• The final paragraph proposes something concrete at the hiring university.

Example 2 (Psychology, faculty position): Teaching for students with disabilities

About one in five students in my introductory psychology sections has a documented disability, and many more have needs they have never had documented. Early in my teaching I treated accommodations as paperwork. I now design my courses so that fewer students need them in the first place.

All of my lecture slides and readings are posted in accessible formats before class. Every video has captions. Exams have generous time limits for everyone, which has made almost no difference to average scores and a large difference to student stress, according to my end-of-term surveys. Students can choose between a written paper and a recorded presentation for the final project.

I have also worked to make research more accessible. In my lab, I have adapted our study procedures so that participants with low vision can take part, and I mentored an undergraduate who is deaf through an honors thesis on captioning and memory. She is now in a PhD program.

At [University], I would bring these practices to the courses I teach, and I would be glad to work with the disability resource center on training for teaching assistants.

What works here:

• The opening uses a figure from the applicant's own sections and admits a past mistake.
• The changes are specific and easy to picture: accessible files, captions, time limits, project choices.
• The applicant reports the effect of the time-limit change instead of only describing it.
• The research paragraph extends the commitment beyond teaching, with one strong mentoring result.
• The offer to train teaching assistants is a practical contribution to the university.

Example 3 (Public health, faculty position): A community engagement statement

The question in the job posting is how my work engages the communities [University] serves. For me, the answer starts with the farmworker clinics in [County].

For six years I have partnered with three community clinics to study heat illness among agricultural workers. The research questions come from clinic staff and workers themselves. We meet every quarter, in Spanish and Mixteco with an interpreter, and the community advisory board approves every survey before it goes into the field. Workers on the board are paid for their time.

The partnership has produced four peer-reviewed papers, but the result I care about most is practical. Our findings helped the clinics win state funding for mobile cooling stations at harvest sites, and the clinics now track heat illness visits using a system my students helped build.

I involve students at every step. Each year, four to six MPH students complete their practicum with the clinics, and several have stayed on as staff. At [University], I would continue this model with partners in the region and teach the department's course in community-based participatory research.

What works here:

• The first sentence restates the prompt, which matters when a school asks about community engagement rather than diversity.
• The partnership is described in concrete terms: three clinics, quarterly meetings, interpreters, paid board members.
• Research output is mentioned, but the practical result for the community comes first.
• Students are part of the work, which links engagement to teaching.
• The closing ties the model to the region and to a specific course.

Example 4 (Mathematics, faculty position): A student success statement

Most of my students are transfer students from community colleges, and many work full time. Student success, for them, is mostly about finishing. My job is to remove obstacles that have nothing to do with mathematics.

The biggest one I found was timing. Our upper-division courses were offered only in the morning, when many transfer students were at work. I worked with the chair to move two required courses to evening sections and to offer one online. Enrollment in those sections filled in the first week.

I also changed how I grade. Students can retake any exam once for a capped grade. Homework is graded for completion with detailed feedback on a few problems, so students learn from it without being penalized for practice. Pass rates in my Linear Algebra sections rose from 71 percent to 84 percent over three years.

Finally, I advise the math club, which I restarted with a focus on transfer students. We meet at lunch, not in the evening, and the first meeting each term is about how to find research and internships.

At [University], I would apply the same approach: find out what is keeping students from finishing, fix what I can, and measure whether it worked.

What works here:

• The applicant defines student success for the students they actually teach.
• Scheduling changes are an unusual and practical example that committees will remember.
• Grading changes are explained along with a measured result (71 to 84 percent).
• The math club detail shows attention to timing and access even outside class.
• The closing states a repeatable method rather than a promise.

Example 5 (Biology PhD applicant): A graduate school diversity statement

I grew up in a town of 900 people in eastern Oregon, and I was the only student in my graduating class to major in science. At my state university I was surprised to learn that most of my classmates had done research in high school. I hadn't known that was possible.

That gap is why I have spent the last two years mentoring students from rural high schools. Through my university's outreach program, I helped run a one-week summer camp where 20 high school students extracted DNA from strawberries, ran gels and toured our labs. I kept in touch with six of them by video call during their senior year and helped three with college applications. Two are now biology majors.

In my own research, I study how drought affects native grasses, work that matters to the ranchers I grew up around. I have presented results at a county extension meeting as well as at a conference, and I learned more from the ranchers' questions than from most reviewers.

In graduate school I want to keep mentoring students from places like my hometown. [University]'s summer research program for rural students is one of the reasons I am applying, and I would be glad to serve as a mentor in it.

What works here:

• The background is stated briefly and connected to a clear gap in opportunity.
• The mentoring is concrete and follows students past the camp, with results.
• The research connects to the applicant's community, and the extension talk shows that connection in action.
• The statement names a specific program at the university and offers to take part in it.

Example 6 (Law school): A diversity statement from a former firefighter

I spent nine years as a wildland firefighter before applying to law school. Most of my crew came from small towns and working families, and few of us had finished college. I finished my degree at night, on my phone during off-season shifts, one course at a time.

Firefighting taught me how decisions made far away land on people who aren't in the room. When a fire burns through a rural community, residents have to deal with insurance companies, federal agencies and landlords, often without a lawyer. After the [Fire Name] fire, I volunteered at a legal aid clinic that helped families file insurance claims. I watched an attorney get a widowed rancher's claim paid in two weeks after it had been denied twice. That was when I started thinking about law school.

I would bring to [Law School] the perspective of someone who has worked with his hands and who knows how intimidating the legal system can be for people like my former crew. I plan to practice in rural legal aid, and I would like to join the school's disaster law clinic.

What works here:

• It answers the law school prompt by explaining what perspective the applicant would add to the class.
• The background is shown through specific details (nine years, night classes on a phone).
• The legal aid story is short and shows exactly what drew him to law.
• The goal is concrete (rural legal aid) and tied to a clinic at the school.
• The tone is plain and confident, without overstating hardship.