On Aug. 1, Hamilton College named Theresa “Terry” Martinez as the Vice President and Dean of Students. No stranger to student affairs, Martinez served as the Associate Vice Provost and Dean of Students at Johns Hopkins University, the interim Dean of Students at Columbia University and the Dean of Multicultural Affairs at Ithaca College before arriving on the Hill. In this interview, we get a glimpse at both the personal and professional sides of Dean Martinez, discussing her return to upstate New York, her plans for student engagement at Hamilton and her areas of focus for the fall semester.

THE SPECTATOR:

So, we just really want to get to know you a little bit both personally and as our Dean of Students. Would you like to tell us a bit about your family and your experience moving back to upstate New York?

Terry Martinez: It is exactly one month ago on September 1 that I will have arrived here on campus. Right now, I am living at the end of Campus Road by the ball fields in the duplex there with my little dog who you’ll see around campus quite often. My husband lives in New York, and we have had a long distance relationship for a very long time. He lives in Aurora, New York, which is in the Finger Lakes area, so about two hours away from here. The commute used to be much longer than that, so I’m glad that we get to see each other every weekend now! I also have a son who’s 29, and he lives in Ithaca.

Is having family up here what drew you back to this region?

Hamilton College did. I was at Johns Hopkins before that and wasn’t looking anywhere. This opportunity came up, and I started to talk with folks about the campus and the college, and I came to see it and met with people, and I got really excited about the work and the position. I was really excited to come home. I grew up in New York City, but I lived up here for many years, so I consider upstate New York my home.

What is your favorite Hamilton quirk or tradition that you have encountered so far?

Only having been here with students for two weeks now, or not even, I haven’t seen much yet. But I loved Matriculation because I got to meet every single first year student. I look forward to experiencing the rest of [the traditions], but I don’t really even know what they are. Sure, I’ve read the books and read the brochure and seen them online, but to just really experience them is what I’m looking forward to.

What’s the most memorable piece of advice you received as a student?

Try everything. When it came to courses, explore things that you wouldn’t normally study. For extracurriculars, do something that you wouldn’t normally do, and talk with people who are so unlike you. Really try new things. That’s how I met some of my best friends, that’s how I switched my major. Break out of patterns.

Which student life issues have been brought to your attention the most since you’ve arrived on campus?

As I take a look at where I want to focus my energy on campus, I always take a look at three different things: to make sure that we create a healthy and safe campus, to make sure that our campus is not just diverse, but also inclusive of that diversity and to think about how life outside of the classroom matters to students. I want to really create meaningful opportunities for engagement. It’s always those three things. There could be different issues that I’m addressing or working through, but they all fall into one of those three buckets. So, as I take a look at the campus environment, there are some issues that have been brought to my attention that I’ll continue to explore this year. One is dangerous drinking behavior. Not just alcohol and drinking because you’ll find that on any college campus, but the dangerous drinking behavior that causes students to make bad decisions about themselves and about others that compromises the health and safety that I talked about. The second is with respect to sexual misconduct on campus. I want to make sure that our processes are following best practices, that students feel supported through that process, whether they be a respondent or a complainant, and that we’re doing some good education around that for our students. And then the third is diversity and inclusion. We have the most diverse first year class on campus, and the campus is changing in many ways, from student experience to faculty and staff experience.

I think that’s wonderful because I think that we learn from people who have different perspectives, but I want to make sure that, in particular, the student experience is a good one. Because there’s information that demonstrates, and not just here at Hamilton, but across the nation, that on many historically predominantly white campuses, the underrepresented minority experience is vastly different and not as positive. Sometimes, you can have a vastly different experience and say “mine isn’t like the others, and this is great!” but they’re not always as positive. So, we have to ask ourselves ‘how do we make sure that students have a good experience and feel like they’re a part of the community, however they define that community for themselves?’ And that they feel a sense of community.

At every school, students work really hard to be heard by the administration, and it tends to be a highly discussed topic amongst students. Do you have any plans for facilitating effective communication between students and administrators?

My reputation is for connecting with students. I don’t feel that I can be a Dean of Students if I don’t know the student body. So in the past I’ve done a few things to cause intentionality in my connections with students, and I am taking a look at what’s going to work here. I plan on being in the dining hall for dinner twice a week with students, and there for lunch as often as I can. I just came back from lunch, and while I was there I plopped myself down next to some students and had a great conversation with them. I went over and introduced myself to the Men’s Hockey team and the hockey coach and talked with them for a few minutes. And I think it’s that engagement with the community that’s really important. Also, I want to not only extend welcome but to presume welcome. That’s really important. I said when I met with the RAs and the Pre Orientation leaders, ‘invite me to things. Let me know if there’s a production or a sporting event or even if you’re just presenting in class and you need moral support. Just invite me and I’ll be there.’ And then I had a student say ‘Oh, we’re having an a cappella concert one of the first nights,’ and I went and got to enjoy that. And, in addition, in the next couple months or so, I’ll be moving to a house on campus that has a lot of space, and my goal is to invite students into my home for things like dinner, receptions, dessert so that I can get to talk with students and really find out what their experiences are. I also have an Instagram account and a Twitter account, and in the past I have sent out tweets of places where students can find me and connect with me. So I’ll tweet something like ‘Hey I’m going to Opus, and I’ll buy coffee for the first five people that approach me!” or whatever it is. That’s the way that I will try to connect with students, and that replicates some things i’ve done in the past. But I also need to find what works at Hamilton as well, so there might be some other things that I don’t know yet!

I

saw that, at Johns Hopkins, you divided the Student Life office up into four departments: Community Living, Diversity and Inclusion, Health and Wellness and Student Engagement. Do you have any plans to reorganize our system here at Hamilton?

I’m still looking, and I think that, at Hopkins, that system worked to cover all the areas that fell within my purview. I had 14 different units that reported to me, so essentially, I supervised just about every single area outside the classroom that didn’t have an academic componentx. And as I think about the work there and how staff members collaborated, it made sense to organize it in that way. So what I will do is just take a look at how people collaborate, where there are some natural collaborations, if they’re intentional, and really decide what that will look like. We have some of those areas already in place; Residential Life, Dean Landry who oversees Health and Safety, Multicultural Affairs and Student Support, so I just need to think about whether I need to do anything about it or not. It may take a bit to really understand the work around that. And, again, if there would be any reorganization it would be to make sure that there are intentional collaborations, communications and partnerships around the student experience.

Hamilton’s putting on the “Common Ground” speaking event, and there’s so much talk about free speech and the treatment of those with differing views across the nation, not just on college campuses. Does the Student Life office have any ideas for how to approach these subjects?

I value free speech, even if I don’t agree with what’s being said, and I know that that’s what the “Common Ground” is intending to do; to bring different perspectives to the table in respectful ways. I think that what’s happening nationally is that we are talking at each other and not to each other. We’re not even hearing. So I think it’s important for us to have conversations about how we listen, how we hear, what we listen to and how we filter out noise for real conversation. I don’t want to give white supremacy a platform, but it’s important for me to know what they’re saying. So, it’s challenging, and as a nation we haven’t figured it out, and I think college campuses are also grappling with it.

Lastly, as every student is asked when they first get to campus, do you have a fun fact about yourself that you’d like to share?

I actually think that I’m one of the funniest people I know.

I could see that! I get that vibe.

I’m very professional right now, but I’m probably one of the funniest people I know! What piece of advice do you have for me as I start my journey here?

Good question! I think just making as many face-to-face connections as you can, which it sounds like you’re already planning on doing. I know that it makes a huge difference when you can put a face to a name and can feel comfortable approaching someone. Establishing that human connection will be huge.

Thank you for your time!