May 31, 2022
Associate Vice President for Student Life Connie Tingson Gatuz, Ph.D. has announced that Kyra T. Shahid, Ph.D. will be the next director of the William Monroe Trotter Multicultural Center. The Trotter Multicultural Center serves as a campus facilitator, convener, and coordinator of intercultural engagement and inclusive leadership education initiatives for University of Michigan students. Dr. Shahid comes to Student Life from the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, where she currently serves as an Assistant Director with a focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Prior to joining the University of Michigan, Dr. Shahid led diversity, equity, and inclusion work on a number of college campuses across the country, including at Xavier University, where she was the director of the Center for Diversity and Inclusion. Alongside her strategic oversight of over twenty multicultural student organizations, direct support of an institutional diversity strategic plan, and collaborations with other universities, Dr. Shahid also established the Stained Glass Initiative, a multifaceted response to the university’s historical connections to racism and slavery that remains part of her living legacy on Xavier’s campus.
Student Life places great value on partnership and collaboration, and Dr. Shahid is no stranger to this, as shown by her collaboration with the University of Cincinnati, the Universities Studying Slavery Consortium, and local activists and community organizations. Together, they hosted the first slavery symposium at a northern Ohio institution, attracting scholars from five countries and hundreds of local students, staff, and faculty.
Dr. Shahid’s first day as director of Trotter will be June 13, 2022.
During the interim period when the Trotter director position remained open, Nadia Bazzy, Ph.D., director of Multi-Ethnic Students Affairs at the University of Michigan, provided leadership and support to Trotter staff. The search was co-chaired by Marie Ting and Roger Fisher, with Riana Anderson, Nadia Bazzy, Conner Chinavare, Patricia Coleman-Burns, Amanda McLittle, Joshua Mollison, Susan Pile, Rosemary Perez, Isis Rodriguez, and Amber Williams serving on the search committee. Kelly Blaine supported the search.