Welcome to The University of Central Oklahoma.
This is a wonderful place to learn work and grow.
At UCO, you can feel at home where we celebrate diversity, respect differences and cultivate
an environment that welcomes everyone.
Join our faculty and staff who work to create a culture of inclusion, equity, and diversity.
My favorite thing about The University of Central Oklahoma is absolutely my students.
Not only how engaged they are in class and how much agency and self-efficacy they possess,
a real sense that their education is their responsibility, but also their sense that
when they see something that needs to be addressed,
they act on it.
They don't wait uh to figure out if somebody else will handle it for them, they step into
that gap.
And, I certainly would say that our students' awareness of social justice issues is miles
beyond what I see from a lot of other students.
My student body looks a lot like the people of Oklahoma City.
It's not an exclusionary space, it's not a space where only one kind of person gets to
come.
I am president of the 2SLGBQIA+ Faculty and Staff Association.
When I interviewed here, one of the first things that I wanted to set up was meetings
with people on campus who were doing advocacy work in queer and 2SLGBQIA+ communities broadly.
We have the center here.
The Center is such a valuable space for students, but also for faculty.
Success Initiatives accomplish that.
The Office of Diversity and Inclusion accomplishes that and The Center to create sound family
for those who need it.
I want to be somewhere where what I do matters.
And where the people that I'm working with, the students that I'm working with have a
sense that what we're doing matters.
I love working at The University of Central Oklahoma because to me it's a home.
I feel like people will love working at UCO because of the sense of community and family,
also how diverse and how multicultural our university is.
For me, I love working at the University of Central Oklahoma.
I feel it is a privilege to be at this university.
I feel that my co-workers make me feel like I'm part of this great family here at UCO,
and it is a privilege to work at this University.
I feel like this is really a family for me, an extended family and I feel like working
here has given me so many opportunities and so many challenges, but at the same time has
given me so many good memories as well and I
feel like you know my co-workers and the people that I work with every day are a blessing.
I wear many hats around campus, but most importantly
I help a lot of organizations conduct their
events.
They're really big on diversity and they have a lot of programs and a lot of events that
support that and that promote diversity.
I help coordinate and run a lot of the video production and audio production.
One of the biggest events that we do on campus is commencement.
Commencement we get to see thousands and hundreds of students graduate.
For us and for my team I believe it's, it's very it's very satisfactory to see all of
the students and their families on that big important day.
My job is very rewarding, I feel like everything that we do every day is so important.
They believe in you, they entrust you with with the the power to make your own decisions
on the on the job.
Every day we do something different for the betterment of the student body and for the
faculty and the staff.
Coming back to UCO after completing my undergraduate
degree, my master's degree,
here also at UCO, my time overseas living in Tokyo, Japan for awhile and then coming
back here to UCO is like I've come back home in a way.
My time teaching English as a second language
in Japan was a good experience for me to understand
what it was like to live in a different country.
My experience at UCO was definitely I think the beginning that set the stage for me to
even become open enough to consider the idea of going overseas.
Now my work as the director for pre-college adult TRIO programs.
I get the opportunity to work with lots of different populations and people from different
walks of life.
People are different so you can't really just make any mold fit, you can't judge anybody
just as people come to you that's how they come, you work with them in that way.
I think so it's communities it's kind of like like home you know home's where you make it.
A community is the same way so creating a community around people who share some of
the same ideas and it's not always about how you look.
They don't have to look alike or act alike to be part of the community, but share some
you know ideas together and like to learn different and new things, new opportunities.
And, I think being on a diverse college campus it definitely gives the opportunity for that
to happen.
Cause I definitely took full advantage of that.
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