The Office of Multicultural Development has a strong legacy of supporting students of color and encouraging our community to work towards diversity in Christian unity.
The Office of Multicultural Development (OMD) began at Wheaton during the 1970s. Since then, the department has gone through a lot of changes, including multiple names: Office of Minority Affairs, Office of Minority Student Development, Office of Multicultural Student Development. But through the years, OMD has remained committed to being a home for students of color, a resource for ethnic majority students who want to learn more about Christ-centered diversity, and an encouragement to the College to cultivate Christian unity that values and celebrates ethnic and cultural diversity.
In 2013 a new space for OMD was created on the lower level of the Beamer Center to serve as a place where students can stop by any time for a snack, a cup of coffee and the chance to reflect on our identity as it relates to ethnicity and culture. It's a place to interact with people of diverse backgrounds and together work through questions of what it means to live as the people of God.
OMD currently works with a series of student organizations including:
- Wheaton College Gospel Choir
- William Osborne Society
- Koinonia
- Mu Kappa (MK & TCK students)
- Unidad Christiana
- 1-2-1 Program
- Shalom Community
Former director of OMD, Rodney Sisco '84 (who passed away in December of 2018) noted, “Part of being the body of Christ is that we understand what grace is. Grace says that we are to be patient with each other. We spend time with each other. We're preparing young men and women to know how to address that outside of Wheaton—how to be people who are able to engage with difference and conflict in a way that still says we're doing it as men and women of God."