Mount Holyoke College is a seven-time HEED Award recipient

For the seventh year, Mount Holyoke College has received the Higher Education Excellence and Distinction (HEED) Award from Insight Into Academia, the oldest and largest diversity-focused publication in higher education. As a recipient of the annual HEED Award — a national honor recognizing United States colleges and universities that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to academic excellence, belonging and community-building in all aspects of campus life — Mount Holyoke will be featured in the October 2026 issue of Insight Into Academia.

This spring, MHC celebrated our tenth Building On Our Momentum (BOOM!): Community Day — an annual opportunity for shared diversity learning among students, faculty, staff and alums.

Mount Holyoke continues to welcome activists, artists, authors and educators who help us actualize our commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion and create a world in which all lives are valued and affirmed.

“As a gender-diverse women’s college, we are dedicated to strengthening policies and practices that affirm women, transgender, non-binary and gender-nonconforming students, as well as to living our commitment to becoming an anti-racist, inclusive community,” said Kijua Sanders-McMurtry, vice president for equity and inclusion at Mount Holyoke College. “We do so during a time when diversity, equity, inclusion and access efforts are being rolled back. The HEED Award affirms the collective work of our students, faculty, staff and alums to build a campus where every person can cultivate their interests and gain the skills to contribute to scholarship, the community and the wider world.”

“We take a detailed and somewhat holistic approach to reviewing each application in determining who will be named a HEED Award recipient. Our standards are high, and we look for institutions where academic excellence and belonging are woven into the work being done every day across their campus,” said Lenore Pearlstein, co-publisher of Insight into Academia.

Learn more about the 2026 HEED Award.