Upon graduation from high school, I volunteered for the US Navy and served as a Navy Corpsman from 1972-1976. A year after discharge, I joined the US Peace Corps and worked for six years in the Philippines with Tribal Filipinos on the island of Mindoro in the areas of community development, land tenure issues, health care training, and agro-forestry (1977-1983). Upon returning to Indianapolis, I enrolled in Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) as a full-time student who also worked full-time while raising three sons. During this time, I spent six months in Delano, California researching the attitudes of Filipino farm-workers towards labor unions for Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, AFL-CIO. After I graduated in 1987, I entered Yale University where I earned a Ph.D. in anthropology (1994).

I worked for three years as a visiting lecturer and academic advisor at IUPUI before I accepted a position with the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy as a research fellow. I was the lead researcher and co-author of African American Traditions of Giving and Serving. From 1996-2002, I served as the Assistant Dean for Indiana University Graduate School at IUPUI where I focused on African American and Latino graduate student recruitment. During this time, I volunteered as co-chair for the Minority Achievers Scholars program, directed the IUPUI Summer Research Opportunities Program, served as co-PI on Dr. David Wilkes’ T35 training grant, and submitted a successful NIH Bridges to the Doctorate proposal. Through these affiliations and through collaborations with faculty at several minority serving colleges and at IUPUI, I helped increase the number of African American and Latino doctoral students in biomedical science programs from one African American and no Latinos in 1997 to over twenty-five by 2003.

In 2002, I accepted the position of Director of Admissions for Indiana University School of Dentistry (IUSD), where I helped devise and implement strategies for pre-dental students and applicants that resulted in the most diverse DDS student body in the history of IUSD. Through formal ties with local urban high schools, we established workshops and seminars for inner city students, and we created a predental student organization for college students from economically and disadvantaged households. Through these and other initiatives, we admitted the school’s most diverse classes five times. I also implemented changes in how we screened applicants and ranked interviewees. These changes resulted in classes entering the school with higher academic accomplishments than any class prior to my arrival. Additionally, I personally contacted each Indiana resident who submitted an unsuccessful application, discussing with them the strengths and weaknesses of their applications and offering suggestions on how to improve their credentials. Thus, I established a pipeline to pre-professional master’s degree programs, through which aspiring dental students with lackluster undergraduate grades could enhance their chances for admission by demonstrating they can indeed succeed academically in a rigorous graduate program. During my ten years at IUSD, we admitted well over 100 graduates of such programs, all of whom moved through the curriculum seamlessly.

In 2005, I was named Assistant Dean for Student Affairs while retaining my title as Director of Admissions. In this capacity, I began monthly meetings with student leaders in which we discuss effective and efficient student governance and the role of the student body as lifelong stakeholders in IUSD. This strategy culminated in the student leaders blossoming into agents of change that led to a more professional discourse between the students and the administration with tangible results such as a revamped attendance policy and innovative modes of instruction such as podcasting. I earned the reputation of maintaining an open door policy for students who need guidance or who simply wanted to stop by for a chat. I also visited faculty regularly to learn more from them about dentistry, dental education, and their ideas on how we can improve facets of IUSD. I was involved with an effort to promote careers in academic dentistry among our students and was invited me to coauthor a paper on our initiative (IDDS Dateline, summer 2009). I spearheaded the move to create the position for an Associate Dean for Diversity, authoring the job description and chairing the search and screen committee. I received training in a campus-wide conflict resolution program and served as a mediator. The IUSD Alumnae Association selected me as an Honorary Alumnus, and the IUSD faculty elected me to the Theta Theta Chapter of Omicron Kappa Upsilon, honors that caught me completely by surprise and truly humbled me.

In 2012, I accepted an offer from Tufts University School of Dental Medicine (TUSDM) to join the school’s administration as Associate Dean for Admissions & Student Affairs. Upon my arrival, Dean Thomas charged me with developing an international service program, improving the diversity of the student body, and initiating a student wellness program. I also decided to develop a prominent ethical and professional development program. Over the past seven years, I have realized all four goals. Through a collaborative effort with several colleagues, we now have a robust global service-learning program that includes both service learning trips to several countries as well as student exchange programs. Our efforts to bring in a more diverse student body has resulted in the most diverse classes in TUSDM history. With a DMD student body that now includes 110 African Americans, 328 Asians, 104 Latinos and 448 Whites, TUSDM is one of the most diverse dental schools in the country. Additionally, roughly 40% of our students hail from disadvantaged households. In 2015, we implemented our student mind-body wellness program that includes a Director of Mind & Body Wellness, a student wellness organization and a mandatory wellness curriculum, all of which have been very well received by our students. Similarly, we implemented an ethics program that includes a Director of Ethical & Professional Development and a mandatory ethics curriculum. As the school’s diversity officer, I initiated and directed the Adapting to Diversity in Dentistry seminar series for our faculty, and I developed a summer reading program devoted to enhance cultural competency for faculty, staff and students.