USD-Magazine-Summer-2023

Regina Dixon-Reeves, PhD Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Director, Center for Inclusion and Diversity

Just Ask Questions

Everything is Beautiful San Diego is really different from Chicago. I absolutely love Southern California. It’s so funny, because I had never noticed how gray it was in Chicago until I got here. I remember how blue the sky seemed the first time I was on campus. I never considered myself a person with seasonal affect disorder, but clearly I suffered from it because it is so bright here that it literally makes me happy. Ask and You Shall Receive As a first-generation college student, my mom was incredibly supportive. She always encouraged me to ask questions, to seek out help and to keep asking if I didn’t get the answers I needed. Her best advice was for me to always be willing to talk to people, to put myself out there and not only ask for help, but also ask for resources and then follow through on those resources. That was the best advice I could have received and is the same advice I give to young people now. Doing the Right Things Marquette University, where I earned my undergraduate degree, is a great Catholic, Jesuit university. There was a lot I didn’t necessarily take advantage of because I didn’t know to. That has fueled my passion for making sure young people know how they can get through school and fully engage in all its resources. I myself didn’t do an internship, didn’t study abroad, didn’t take advantage of career placement and career services the way I should have. Whenever I talk with young people, I encourage them to do those things because they’re important. Leadership Alignment Is Key At USD, there’s an incredible commitment by both the president and the provost to make diversity and inclusion paramount in their list of priorities for the university. This community is passionate about diversity,

Coming Together You can’t have community if people don’t know each other. It’s incredibly important to have small intimate gatherings as well as large communal spaces where people have an opportunity to meet and interact with people that they might not normally interact with. We work on programs that really allow us to share the various sides of who we are. It can’t just be science and math at the exclusion of the humanities and the social sciences. We are an interdisciplinary community. Keeping the Faith Even in contentious times we can find hope every time we look into one of the young people’s eyes that we meet here on campus. We find hope in the fact that we have students and faculty and staff who say, “I’ve lived through this pandemic and I’m still here. I was born for such a time as this!” That should give us hope. Every time we look at the accomplishments of our students and alumni, that should give us hope because we have contributed to someone who is going to be a Changemaker. I find hope when I look at our incredibly committed and impressive faculty and the work that they are doing and the issues they are tackling. A Message of Love Jesus himself was a social justice advocate. He spoke for people who were disenfranchised. It is His message of love that we extend to the people who come into our community. That gives me hope, because I feel that love from other people as well. So, I hope that we know that we are preparing people to go and engage in those ways. For myself, I absolutely love being at USD. I am so grateful that you all took a chance on me. There are other people who could have done this job. I am grateful to be in community with you, doing this work that I love. — As told to Julene Snyder

equity and inclusion and is really engaging in individual and institutional change. Since I’ve been here, what’s really struck me is that I haven’t received much pushback from anybody. Finding, Nurturing, Growing I see my role as helping us to develop a common framework, a common language and a common vision for how we get where we want to be. I am trying to approach the work systematically and through best practices. We know from research that diversity equals excellence and that diversity equals a better environment for everyone. In order to have a more diverse community, we need to attract a more diverse applicant pool and give them an equal chance of being hired. But once we get them here, we also have to give them opportunities to grow, thrive and be successful. Rigorous, Diverse and Strong One of the things I’m most proud of is that over the past four years we’ve seen increasing enrollment of students of color across the board. And particularly in the last three years — especially since we stopped using ACT and standardized scores to admit undergrads — we’ve found that those students are competitive and that they are doing as well as any of the previous cohorts before them. We’re Getting Better This year’s strong and diverse applicant pool will hopefully counter people’s fears that the more students of color we admit, the less prestigious we will be. What we’re showing is that the more diverse we are, the better we are. These students are on track to continue to be retained and to graduate. That’s important because it shows that diversity really is our strength. It’s our academic strength and it’s our intellectual strength. Diversity of opinions, thoughts and experiences makes for a rigorous intellectual environment.

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Summer 2023