Before Dr. Roland Mitchell, dean for LSU’s College of Human Sciences & Education (LSU CHSE), became an administrator, he worked on campus as an instructor while he finished his dissertation. He picked an inauspicious time to arrive.
“I moved the week of Katrina,” he recalled. “There were all of these narratives about Black folks from New Orleans coming down and being criminals.”
Suddenly, it was much harder to rent an apartment in Baton Rouge. 
Dr. Roland Mitchell
“When I told the [landlord] that I was new in town and trying to find a place, he had all these extra questions,” said Mitchell. “And one of things that he wanted to find out was, ‘So, what do you do?’ And I told him, ‘Oh, I’m a professor,’ and the guy’s response was like, ‘Yeah, right, prove it.’"
But Mitchell found a much more welcoming spirit on LSU’s campus.
“Folks in our kinesiology program were headed to the field house and would provide first aid services,” said Mitchell. “Our childhood educators would set up makeshift schools. Our librarians provided so much information and support. When there was this kind of trauma, they went in, instead of going out. To this day, it gives me great pride.”
The students whose actions inspired Mitchell were from the very school that he now leads as one of a handful of Black education deans in America.
