Graduating with my doctorate from the LEAD program was an experience I’ll never forget.
In my role as the dean of undergraduate admissions, I’m constantly promoting the Berkeley experience. So going to school here and working here at the same time was probably one of the greatest things I’ve ever done.
Last year, the first group of freshmen that I admitted to Berkeley graduated. So there were definitely students I was taking pictures with who, when they heard my name announced, were probably like, “Wait a second, that’s the guy that was on my admit letter, right?”
I’ve been working in admissions since I graduated from undergrad in 2007. I began my career at Ithaca College; I worked at University of Delaware, Cornell, Stanford, and now Berkeley. One of the main reasons why I came here was because I wanted to know what it would look like if we actually centered an office around equity and inclusion. In all those other roles, I had been doing diversity work as a multicultural recruiter and, oftentimes, when you are doing that work and the budget gets tight or there’s a leadership change, it’s the diversity work that gets compromised in some way.
I got here in January 2019. Through both COVID and the George Floyd, Breonna Taylor summer, there was a lot of talk about systems—about policing systems and criminal justice reform. And I started really thinking about my role in a different type of system, which is education.
The LEAD program is an Ed.D. program in the School of Education. LEAD stands for Leaders for Equity and Democracy. It is a program for school and system leaders to really think about the ways that we can create, lead, and educate like democracy depends on it.
One of the main reasons why I applied to the LEAD program was because it required some work experience. Doing this work without really studying it can make it fragile to current trends or new leadership. I have to be able to defend why we are taking an approach, and it can’t just be because “this is what kids need” or “this is the right thing to do.” I have to have grounded, research-based evidence that supports our “why” and our “how.”
While I was in the LEAD program, the U.S. Supreme Court made the decision to strip away the consideration of race for everyone. While that shocked the profession, it wasn’t new for us here at Berkeley. We already couldn’t consider race or gender in admissions to state-funded schools in California due to Prop. 209. But because of the scholarship I was doing, I was able to bring in four of the most diverse classes that Berkeley’s ever seen since Prop. 209 passed in 1996.
Graduation was great for a couple of reasons. I am a first-generation Nigerian American. Both of my parents came to the United States as international students at West Virginia University, and my grandfather could not read or write. To go from that to this, it’s major for me and for my family. Also, in my last year of the program, I had a son. Walking across the stage, he was in the crowd. My dad was in the crowd. It put a lot into perspective.
The only thing that made me prouder than walking across that stage was being able to see my dissertation in ProQuest. When I first got into the program, a friend of mine said, “When you write your dissertation, it’s the academic version of immortality,” because there are going to be people who cite you who you never meet. There are going to be people who use your research to prove points or to dissuade or to persuade others.
Especially now, when we have to have cogent arguments to defend why we think diversity matters or equity matters or inclusion matters, using the research to back up your argument is so important. LEAD really gave me a space to think about many issues across the work, but also many solutions. I think the solutions-oriented nature, the commitment to educating like democracy depends on it, is what is so inspiring about the program.
And now that I’m finished with it, I reflect on the words of our program director who said, “You have to be crazy to commit to studying and taking on an additional degree during the pandemic just so that, when you’re done, you can work harder than you’ve ever worked before.” Call me crazy, but I’ve never been more committed to educational justice than I am now.
