Mount Holyoke College is a six-time HEED Award recipient

For the sixth consecutive year, Mount Holyoke College has received the 2025 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 and 60 other recipients will be featured in the October 2025 issue of Insight Into Academia.

“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 are being pushed to the sidelines. The HEED Award affirms the collective work of our students, faculty, staff and alums to build a campus where every person can pursue their passions 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 2025 HEED Award.