Equity and inclusion specialist will also be Title IX coordinator

Thursday, August 19, 2021
Laura Buchs headshot

Laura Buchs will join UNH as the new director of the Affirmative Action and Equity Office and Title IX coordinator beginning Aug. 23. Buchs, an equity and inclusion specialist with advanced Title IX and non-adversarial investigation training, has more than 10 years of professional experience in higher education and comes to UNH from Loyola University Chicago, where she served as deputy Title IX coordinator and equity investigator.

“I am looking forward to getting to know the community and learning the ways in which I can be of the most service,” Buchs says. “Every university in the United States has a unique opportunity to rethink and reshape how equity and compliance interplay with its mission and goals. Coming into closer alignment with who we want to be is challenging and enriching work, and I welcome being part of these ongoing efforts at UNH.” 

While completing graduate studies in international training and education, Buchs served as the assistant and interim international student coordinator for the Washington semester program at American University and directed recruitment and admissions activities within her academic program. She later directed living-learning communities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and circumnavigated the globe with Semester at Sea.

In a Presidential Management Fellowship (PMF) post law school, she received an award from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs for her work on training VA employees in the assessment of claims for benefits based on military sexual trauma. For the past seven years, she has worked in higher education responding to and investigating discrimination and sexual misconduct complaints. Some of her prior roles have been EEO compliance manager at the University of New Mexico, manager and investigator for equity and diversity compliance at California State University Northridge and attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice.