Arnold native, Valley High alum named assistant dean at Harvard Law School

An Arnold native and New Kensington-Arnold School District graduate has been named an assistant dean at Harvard Law School.

Monica E. Monroe will start Feb. 22 as assistant dean of the Office of Community Engagement, Equity and Belonging at Harvard Law School.

She is going to Harvard from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where she has been since 2016 and in 2019 became its first associate dean for Equity and Inclusion.

Her work at Harvard will include leading efforts to provide and develop programming for historically underrepresented and first-generation students, foster connections and a sense of belonging across the law school community, create mentorship connections and support leaders of student organizations. It builds on her work at Penn, where she cultivated several programs aimed at building a safe and collegial environment for law students.

“I hope to come in and listen and understand the needs of the community and work with my colleagues to ensure that everyone who is at Harvard and everyone who desires to be at Harvard, everyone who thinks Harvard is a dream, to let them know that it’s possible,” Monroe said.

“I want the students to feel that they belong. I want us to be able to find common ground. Once we find the things that we enjoy about one another and what we like about one another, we can then work on the harder issues.”

Monroe, 48, graduated from Valley High School in 1991 and is the daughter of Douglas and Mercedes Monroe of Arnold.

“It’s a very proud moment,” said her mother, Mercedes Monroe, who was moved to tears. “She perseveres. She’s been blessed; there’s no doubt about that. She’s a hard worker.”

Sarah Yurga was one of Monroe’s classmates at Valley High School. She remembers Monroe being kind and friendly with all of her classmates.

“It does not surprise me at all that she specializes in inclusion, because she was that rare student who made everyone feel included,” said Yurga, who was elected to the New Kensington-Arnold School Board in November.

Another classmate, Tony Vigilante, is an attorney who is solicitor to New Kensington and the New Kensington-Arnold School District.

“We were friends in high school and have spoken over the years. She was an excellent student, excelling in the classroom,” he said. “I’m not surprised at all by her great success, and I am positive she will continue to make Valley proud at Harvard.”

Monroe earned degrees in economics and philosophy from Boston University in 1995, and a law degree from The George Washington University Law School in 1998.

She clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, and spent six years in private practice in Washington, D.C., focusing on real estate, housing, employment and commercial law.

She returned to George Washington Law School in 2004 to teach legal research and writing, and served as the school’s assistant dean of student affairs before being promoted to associate dean in 2012.

Monroe’s parents live in the Victoria Avenue home where Monica and her sister grew up. Her father, 73, is a retired steelworker; her mother, 70, was a stay-at-home mother who did some work and volunteering for the school district. Her sister, Daneene Monroe Rusnak, lives in Ohio.

Mercedes Monroe is most excited about the good her daughter will be able to do at Harvard.

“There’s a light in Monica,” she said. “She’s always wanted to make the world a better place. For her, it’s what good she can do over any fears or obstacles and making a difference.”

Monroe lives in Wyncote, Pa., outside Philadelphia with her partner, Michael Barham, and their sons, Mason, 7, and Miles, 10.

She comes back to New Kensington-Arnold many times each year and has fond memories of the area. Her mother presents as white, her father as a Black man.

“It was a very diverse place in the sense that you had people who identified as being Black, people who identified as being white and everything in between,” she said. “Growing up, I always said I was born in the best of both worlds and everything in between. That really laid the foundation for my passion for this work.”

As dean of students at the Carey Law School for three years, Monroe prioritized caring for students’ mental health.

“Good mental health is the foundation for everything that you will do in life,” she said. “It’s difficult to get health care; it’s even more difficult to get mental health care. All of us need help. None of us get where we are without help. I wanted to destigmatize that.”

Monroe said her work at Harvard will be similar to what she did at Penn, although structured differently. Like it was at Penn in 2019, the office she is going into at Harvard also is new.

She said equity and inclusion are issues that impact everyone.

“However you identify — be it race, political party — everyone wants to feel included. At the end of the day, everyone wants to be heard, seen and respected,” she said. “Those three things to me boil down to love. Everyone really wants to just be loved, and unconditionally. Everyone wants to be able to show up as their authentic self and still know that they can be embraced.

“To me, belonging is at the core of how you will thrive and how a community will thrive, a corporation will thrive, society will thrive, our nation will thrive and the world will thrive,” she said. “Clearly, we have much work to do.”

As someone who once was told the things she wanted to do were out of her reach or that she wasn’t good enough, Monroe hopes to be an example and an inspiration for others to reach for and find their own truths and create their own futures.

“There is no comfort in growth. You are going to be uncomfortable,” she said. “When you are uncomfortable, that’s how you know you’re growing.

“It’s your obligation to look out for others and to give back. I don’t know what other reason we’re walking this Earth for. It doesn’t matter your background. We really are all connected. Keep believing, and maintain faith.”