On Oct. 28, Augustana College appointed Steve Wehling as its first civil rights director. He will also replace Jennie Hemingway as Title IX coordinator, as she left the school in August this year.

Vice President of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Gauri Pitale said the former Title IX coordinator also handled civil rights, but it was not within her official title. Pitale was involved in the hiring process.

“When we had a chance to do a hire after Jennie Hemmingway left, we thought that it’s a good practice to put that piece of their job into the title,” Pitale said. “She was always serving in that capacity, but now we have it in the title.”

As a civil rights director, Wehling said he will oversee the campus policy on minors, comply with the Civil Rights Act and work with students during the appeals process with the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

This role is a part of the DEI division and involves many overlapping responsibilities. Wehling said he hopes to be able to further educate the campus through his role. 

“I think at a lot of institutions this office is seen primarily as a compliance office where we process complaints around civil rights concerns, but there’s also a lot of opportunity to do productive work around conflict resolution and preventing conflict,” Wehling said. “That’s also part of the mandate of Title IX, is to respond and prevent recurrence of offensive conduct.”

As a Title IX coordinator, Wehling said he will work with students and staff to comply with the 2024 Title IX regulations that went into the act on Aug. 1 of this year. 

With the new regulations, the Title IX policy now includes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. He said the new regulations also include many new accommodations for students who are pregnant or parents.

Wehling came to Augustana with 10 years of civil rights and Title IX experience. He previously worked at the University of Iowa within the civil rights office and the Title IX office and then worked at the University of Illinois within the civil rights office.  

General Counsel Sherri Curran serves as the principal legal counsel for the college and was involved in the hiring process, along with Pitale and Mindy Zamdom, the director of human resources. 

“One thing that we were really excited about with Steve is that he comes with plenty of experience… He’s an attorney, and I think that one of the things is that we didn’t require this position to be an attorney, but it was a preferred qualification,” Curran said. “That’s largely because a lot of this work on responding to discrimination requires an understanding of the legal kind of framework.”