I am a faculty member, but I began my career in higher education as a student affairs administrator. My experiences working in residence halls, as a judicial affairs officer, on a programming board and in student life make me a bit different from your average faculty member. How? I appreciate the work that those in student affairs do.
This past week I had the privilege of giving the closing keynote at the Georgia College Student Personnel Association annual conference. GCPA is a spirited group of young (and slightly older) people who care deeply about students. As I was told I could present on anything I wanted to, I decided that empowering students of color would be a great topic. I care immensely about this topic and I wanted to push the student affairs professionals to care even more than they already might have.
When preparing for the talk, I reached out to my Facebook friends for some suggestions. I know what the research says about empowering students of color and I know what I do in practice, but I wondered what others around the country thought. I received some great suggestions (just another reason why I love Facebook!). Here they are:
1.) Regardless of your race or ethnicity, you can serve as a mentor and role model for students of color. You can reach out to them, provide enriching opportunities and give people a chance to shine.
2.) When you serve on search committees, you can push to have a diverse student affairs staff so that students of color have a multitude of different role models to emulate.
