Student Affairs and Campus Life Division Messages

As we approach the close of another dynamic year, I remain grateful for the creativity and dedication that each of you bring to the UC San Diego student experience. To celebrate your contributions and recognize the teamwork that makes our community both impactful and resilient, I’m looking forward to seeing you (in-person!) next week for Staff Centeredness Day on Tuesday, December 17.

Please continue reading below for important save-the-dates – including our Staff Centeredness Day on Dec. 17 – as well as updates on collaborative efforts to address student food insecurity, resources to help navigate next week’s election, an opportunity for Tritons to publicly recognize the military-affiliated folks in our lives, and more.

As we wrap up TWOW 2024, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to our incredible team and campus partners. Once again, you’ve raised the bar in welcoming, activating, and engaging our newest Tritons and welcoming back our returning students. Below, you’ll find important info and save-the-dates.

Welcome to Fall Quarter 2024. Our campus is once again activated with Triton energy! The work that our team and partners have done to create meaningful opportunities for students to connect with one another, learn about campus resources, and build a sense of community for the year ahead reinforces that all of our Tritons belong at UC San Diego.

UC San Diego has been vibrant and bustling throughout the summer, from Recreation’s Knock Around Campers and campus tours to colleagues savoring fro-yo and visitors enjoying summer programming at the EFA.

With commencement just a couple of days away, I want to offer my most sincere gratitude to each of you and our student-centered partners across UC San Diego for advising, guiding, coaching, mentoring, teaching, engaging, challenging, healing, and supporting our newest Triton alumni during an exceptionally challenging period.

In these challenging times, I hope that the offerings and invitations below will help lift your spirits. Please continue reading for information on submitting nominations for the inaugural campus-wide Student Centeredness Award; tomorrow’s Assessment Day 2024; upcoming Tritons Belong opportunities – including The Longest Table; Mental Health Awareness Month events; and more.

In this month’s message, you’ll find information about the inaugural campus-wide Student Centeredness Award; details about Student Affairs and Campus Life’s upcoming annual Staff Appreciation Week; as well as an important reminder regarding the expectation that each of us and our team members – including our critically important student paraprofessionals – complete the UC Mandatory Training requirements.

Before we jump into the celebratory bulk of today’s Division Message, I ask that you join me in taking a moment to recognize that there may be a challenging week ahead for many in our Triton community. Make it a point to consider the well-being of your fellow peers, colleagues, and the students that we all support as you navigate potential disruptions over the coming days.

There is SO much to celebrate this month, including Black History Month and the start of Lunar New Year. Please continue reading for updates from our AVC colleagues, an introduction to the Campus Activation initiative, and information on the next steps in our Student Affairs and Campus Life 2024-29 strategic planning process.

I hope you were able to enjoy some rest and have a bit of fun during the last few weeks. As we look forward to the coming year, I imagine that we will face a few challenges together. Even so, I remain optimistic about our work together, as I have seen firsthand what you all are able to accomplish each day in support of our fantastic students and dedicated colleagues.

I look forward to seeing you next week when we will have the opportunity to be together, celebrating the winter holidays and your impactful student-centered work at UC San Diego. I am wishing you all a peaceful winter break, good health and time with loved ones. Again, thank you for the compassion and care you show one another and for consistently striving to make UC San Diego a more student-centered community.

It was such a treat to get to see so many of you last week, as we celebrated your collective good work at the Third Annual Student Affairs Staff Awards on Oct. 31. If you weren’t able to attend this year’s ceremony, please take a moment to join us in celebrating the 2023 honorees and view some awesome photos – courtesy of our partners in University Communications – in the next section of today’s message.

As I look back and reflect on another year in support of the university’s strategic goals to ensure we are a truly inclusive community, I remain steadfast in collectively elevating anti-racism at UC San Diego. With cultural humility, let’s challenge ourselves and each other to create more brave spaces, ask better questions centered in anti-racism, and continue to work toward a more just learning, living, and working community.

Welcome to Fall Quarter 2023! It seems like this fall is particularly special given that Eighth College has opened its doors to its inaugural class, and that preparations for Triton Center are well underway – which will provide new and expanded homes for our student-centered units, partners and collaborators.

UC San Diego has been buzzing with activity all summer long. We also continue to have plenty of student-centered construction projects underway, like the revitalization of Price Center West, the forthcoming NPHC Plaza, Pepper Canyon West, Eighth College, and the new Triton Center.

Commencement 2023 is just around the corner – three cheers! I extend congratulations to each of you and our student-centered partners across UC San Diego for advising, guiding, coaching, mentoring, teaching, engaging, challenging, healing, and supporting our newest Triton alumni. With summer quickly approaching, this is an excellent opportunity to celebrate not only our graduates, but also each of you for your student centeredness throughout the year.

As we continue to focus on improving the Triton student experience and begin to develop our next strategic plan, we’ll be operationalizing cross-unit, process-mapping exercises to put to work what we learned from both Dr. Burns and Dr. Drake Warshaw during last week’s Spring All-Staff Meeting. I know each of you is committed to driving innovation to advance student centeredness, inclusion, equity, diversity, well-being, engagement and belonging at UC San Diego.

We’ll be welcoming prospective first-year Tritons this coming Saturday, and again in May for Triton Transfer Days. My thanks in advance to the departments and programs that will be on campus this weekend to warmly welcome our newly admitted students and their loved ones. I look forward to joining you. In this month’s message, you’ll find updates and celebrations as well as an important reminder regarding the expectation that each of us and our team members – including our critically important student paraprofessionals – complete the UC Mandatory Training requirements.

Student Affairs is gearing up for delivering Spring’s Triton traditions and celebrations – the First-Gen Career Readiness Conference, Sun God Festival, and the 30th anniversary of TRIO – while innovative, new programs like last night’s Yoga Under the Stars at Geisel or CollegeCorps (Triton Fellows have contributed more than 10,000 hours since October 2022) serve as examples of our professional team members’ creativity and student centeredness.

Happy New Year! I do hope that you were able to find some time for respite between the end of Fall Quarter and the beginning of this new Winter Quarter. If you’re like me, you may have resolved to get healthier; I committed myself to 10,000 steps a day (not quite there yet) and have been “candy-free” for ten days (so far, so good). Being in community with one another is also good for our health and well-being; here are some opportunities for your teams, our students, and for you to connect and celebrate together.

OCTOBER 2022

Congratulations Annual Staff Awards Recipients!

It was such a treat to get to see so many of you earlier this week, as we celebrated your collective good work at the Second Annual Student Affairs Staff Awards on Oct. 25. It was a time to rejoice in our shared humanity, have some fun, and recognize one another – which made for a particularly uplifting convening – as did the cheers, applause and celebratory hoots shared when our colleagues (most of whom were not aware that they had been selected to receive an award this year) took the stage or Zoom screen to be honored.

As some of you will recall, in the summer of 2020 – after the murder of George Floyd and the global protests that emerged in response – the Division of Student Affairs began to evaluate the degree to which our work could more immediately address our own anti-Black, racist practices and policies from a place of humility and action. As a result, each unit outlined a series of initial Commitments to Address anti-Blackness in our work at UC San Diego.