Oxford College of Emory University’s new dean, Badia Ahad, sat down with The Emory Wheel to talk about the relationship between the Oxford and Atlanta campuses, her prioritized campus initiatives and recent conversations with students and staff. Before joining the College on Aug. 1, Ahad served as vice provost for faculty affairs and a professor of English at Loyola University Chicago.
This Q&A has been edited for clarity and length.
The Emory Wheel: What drew you to Oxford? What did you know about it coming in and what do you know about now?
Badia Ahad: Well, I didn't know much about Oxford. Actually, I knew about Emory, and Emory obviously has an incredible reputation among higher education anyway. But Oxford, I was not that familiar. You may have read that I do a lot of work on flourishing in my own research, and when the executive recruiter reached out to me, she gave me the position description and in the first line it talked about the student flourishing initiative. And so I was like, “Is this kismet?” But it was nice to see an institution really go all in with this concept or this idea that was very important to me professionally, both as a scholar and as an administrator, and to see what the university was putting in place to advance an idea of a student flourishing. So it's not just about academic excellence, but about your social, emotional, psychological well being. So that spoke to me a great deal.
TEW: At Loyola, you led the advanced adoption grant to help retain and promote equity efforts for underrepresented STEM faculty. Can you tell us more about that initiative and how that connects with your goals here at Oxford?
Ahad: That grant was really important to us. At the time, I was the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, and I really saw my role there, honestly, as to help faculty flourish. We needed a lot of work in that area, and we were able to put together a lot of programs to help advance faculty research, but also to create a bigger sense of community among our faculty as well, especially our minoritized women and faculty in stem. Those are just the folks where in certain departments, they may be the only one or one a few, and so we really put together a lot of those programs to help them feel like they're part of the bigger university community and to connect them with one another. So, for example, one of our endeavors through the grant was to have a micro grant actually to encourage collaborative research among women in STEM. But we also started the university’s very first faculty mentoring program, so very invested in mentorship, professional development, again, helping faculty flourish. And so that's certainly something that I would like to continue, obviously, here at Oxford.
TEW: What are some of your biggest priorities for Oxford this year?
Ahad: On the first day, I sent a message to the community saying that I was going to start my 60-day listening tour. So, that ends on [Sept. 29]. People are always like, “Are you gonna stop listening on Friday?” I'm not going to stop listening on Friday. We will continue to have organic conversations, obviously, but part of that is just me being really intentional about meeting with as many people as I can to hear about their experiences at Oxford … So part of that is just me getting to know people and getting to have a sense of kind of their context and that will inform my priorities.
But I would say this year it's really about knowing and understanding the community. I want to double down on the things that we do really well, so those high-impact instructional practices, community-engaged learning, internships, basically beyond the classroom experiences. [I’m] really excited to get our Center for Pathways and Purpose off the ground, so that's one of the high priorities for the year. Obviously, that's really important for students. It's important for our alumni — they're excited to engage with our students. So creating those beyond-the-classroom experiences for students, Center for Pathways and Purpose. Also, what can we do to create more financial opportunities for our students as well? So I know that the college has embarked upon the guarantee funding for internships, so we're looking to see what we can do on our end to match that kind of experience for our students as well. More mentored research opportunities and the like. So those would be kind of top of mind for me right now.
TEW: Could describe how you perceive the connection and relationship between the Oxford campus and the Atlanta campus.
Ahad: I have not spoken with a lot of students who are from Oxford and currently at Atlanta … I guess phase two of the listening tour is to actually branch out to Atlanta, talk to those students, maybe even bring them back to campus and just hear from their perspective what went well … I would love to know more from the student perspective, but I can tell you that what I hear from staff and faculty is that they are overwhelmingly impressed with students who come from Oxford across the board. Those are the students that are very active in the classroom, that are very articulate in terms of their engagement with various subjects.
TEW: And then, Emory College of Arts and Sciences Dean Barbara Krauthamer is also coming into this position the same year as you are on the Atlanta Campus. Have you started conversations with her about improvements that can happen at the same time on both campuses?
Ahad: I've not had any conversations with her about that transition specifically, that is on our list of things to do. I actually have a meeting next week with Linda McCauley, who's the Dean of the School of Nursing, about what we can do to actually facilitate that transition to the School of Nursing, but also she actually has a couple of ideas about specific programs that can be based at Oxford, as well. So I'm excited to have that conversation with her … but as you can imagine, I'm still actually meeting and getting to know my colleagues at the Atlanta campus. I've been doing quite a bit of back and forth lately. It's a little dizzying, but really helpful in that regard.
TEW: Additionally, do you have any plans to connect Oxford to the surrounding Covington community and facilitate that relationship between campus and community?
Ahad: I actually just met Megan [Hulgan], who oversees Volunteer Oxford, like two days ago. She's a staff person, who actually just started last year, who oversees a lot of the community programs and connects Oxford students to those programs … She ran me through all the things that she's doing, and I was surprised at how exhaustive that list was, especially since it is a relatively small community. So I would say that we are pretty well positioned within the larger Oxford and Covington community in terms of service. I know that Bridgette Gunnels does a lot of work with other organizations in the community for community-engaged learning … I think that we're doing pretty well in that regard, but certainly we want to continue to be good neighbors, to build those relationships and really think about not just what we want to do for the community, but what the community needs are and how we can support them in a way that they need.
TEW: Last year, Oxford introduced a spring admission option because a significant number of students were graduating in December to go to the Atlanta campus early. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on how that's been working, if you see that being retained going forward.
Ahad: [Laughs]. I'm only laughing because [in] my meeting this week with our Dean of Enrollment, and Kristin Bonnie, who's our Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, the topic was: “assess spring start” … We also talked about priority, so that circles back to that question, which is building out more of an assessment infrastructure at Oxford. So we have a lot of great programs or programs that seem like they're going really well, but we want to be more intentional about how we're measuring the success of that work and also to learn what we could do better. So with spring start, it’s about what kind of information are we collecting from those students who are in that program?
I know that, to your point, it was developed as a way to kind of fill in the gap for those students who are graduating early, which is fine, but I'm more interested in what is the experience of those students when they get here? … Do they feel like they are really a part of this community? And if not, what can we do better? And also, is this the program that we need? I know for a while Oxford did not accept transfer students, so then if this is going really well, does that open up the door for that kind of process, as well? So those are all things that we're looking at. Do we do more of this program or do we kind of hold it back? One of the early conversations that we're having now is what would it mean to actually bring all students to campus for convocation and orientation week so that they don't have a separate orientation in the spring, which is not as robust as the orientation that everyone else has in the fall? So we want them to have the coke toast experience and all those things, like the Oxford Olympics. So even if they're starting in the spring, what would it look like to actually bring them on campus for a week? So those are all part of the early conversations that we're having now to ensure that we can cultivate that sense of belonging for that group.
TEW: And then now related to that sense of belonging and community. I know you've been here almost two months, but from what you could gauge so far, how do you feel like the mental health and student happiness among the Oxford students is at the moment?
Ahad: I would only be able to speak to that anecdotally. I mean, in my conversations with campus life, and the folks who are really on the ground with students on a day-to-day basis, from what I hear things are going remarkably well. I don't think people are just telling me what I want to hear, but one of the things that I heard last week was that it feels almost like we're back to pre-pandemic levels of just enough normalcy where people are gathering, where they're engaging with one another, where it feels like a more authentic sense of community, and I've heard that across multiple spaces. So that, I think, is a good sign. I also think that students who have certain needs, from what I can tell and from what I've heard, those needs are being met promptly. And I think … by virtue of the size of our environment, it’s really easy to operate at human scale, which is something that [is] really wonderful.
Another thing that actually attracted me to Oxford is that you can really be very hands-on with the students here, so I have not heard any reports of any kind of major issues along the way, but so far, things seem to be going pretty well … One of the messages that I hope students have been hearing that's certainly been here across the board is: take some time and just engage and just have a sense of play. Obviously, you all did a lot to even get into Emory, and it seems a little unfair to tell you to stop and slow down and just enjoy this experience and kind of take it easy, but I think that's an important message, and we're trying to kind of spread that in all areas of student life right now. So I appreciate the diligence and the seriousness when it comes to academics, but as you all will already know maybe, or will learn, is that life is about so much more than that. You're gonna do fine in that area. So again, it was nice to see everyone just out in the quad yesterday, having a good time and laughing and talking and kind of playing around. So that's really what makes this a very rich experience.
TEW: Kind of pivoting back to community relations with the City of Covington, but also in Oxford, Emory has a very deep history with enslavement and displacement, and the University has been working to address that with certain initiatives, like the Twin Memorials Project and renaming several buildings previously dedicated to enslavers. So I'm just wondering first of all what you think of these current projects and if there are any additional ways that you think the University could be engaged with its history?
Ahad: Sure, so from what I know thus far … Emory has done a pretty remarkable job to be honest, of confronting its difficult history, and not shying away from that. And, again, just in my kind of knowledge of the landscape of higher education, I think that there are only a handful of universities that are deeply engaged in that work with really kind of reckoning with and trying to reconcile its very difficult past. I think President Fenves in particular has been very full-throated, and courageous even, in his endeavor to memorialize the work of enslaved people and to honor them.
Certainly, I've had a lot of conversations with Reverend Dr. Avis Williams. We actually played golf a couple of weeks ago. She’s a great golfer — she got a birdie on the first hole, but that's OK. Beat me pretty badly. [Laughs]. But, I got my tour of the campus from her [in the] first couple of weeks, and obviously it was more than just the surface level kind of tour of Oxford. We went out into the community, and she shared her narrative and the narrative of other descendants and Oxford's complicated relationship with that past, and also the things that have been done to attempt to rectify that. So the city, for example, removing the Confederate signage, and I know that that was something that was really high on the demand list of students previously, so I'm encouraged to be honest that the city has responded in that way without a lot of contention or pushback … I've actually been quite surprised by maybe the — I don't want to say the lack of tension — but maybe the lack of contention visibly. Maybe a lot of that work has been done already and I'm kind of on the healing side of things, but right now it seems like people are very excited, honestly, about the Twin Memorials project. They're excited to see not just what the memorials are going to look like and where they're gonna go and that's all very exciting, especially since the design firm has been selected. They're really excited to see how these conversations are going to continue. I think no one wants it to be the case that the memorials are created and then everything just stops, like they're there, the work has been done and we can just go about our business as usual. So how can we actually create an environment of continuous reflection, continuous education and that will happen in the curricular and co-curricular spaces?
TEW: I’m curious, after your 60 days of listening, was there a conversation that was especially surprising or changed your view of Oxford?
Ahad: I don’t think anything necessarily makes me think differently about Oxford. If anything, it's been incredibly validating … One of my tours was with Nitya Jacob, who's a biology professor, and she’s been around for a while … She gave me a tour of the science building. I just thought we would bounce around the building, she'll show me a few labs and that will be that, but she actually sat me down in the lobby of the science building and said, “You know, I just want to talk to you about how important this building is to all of us and the way the community really came together to make this building happen.” And it was such a moving and heartwarming story about how faculty were so engaged in the design of the building, like, how will this work best for student learning? And you don't hear that that often. Normally, when you think about buildings going up on college campuses, it's the design firm that's driving what that looks like and how it's gonna operate, but to hear that the people who were a part of this community, were so involved and so engaged in how that building would best facilitate student learning and student success, that was to my mind really indicative of what's at the heart of Oxford.
