The Chancellor Stuffs Her First Plush

Any week that includes visiting three schools, meeting students, and stuffing a plush jaguar counts as a great week.

My school visits included the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health, the School of Dentistry, and the Robert H. McKinney School of Law. At the Fairbanks School, Interim Dean Nir Menachemi shared with me the school’s impressive research portfolio, including the life-saving work that our faculty and staff did during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading contact tracing for Marion County, among other projects. My visit there was capped by a wonderful school tradition called Fika, a Swedish custom introduced by the school’s founding dean, Paul Halverson, and drawing on Fairbanks students’ study abroad experience in Sweden. This custom focuses on sharing fellowship and food to create community. I was touched by their warm welcome and hospitality.

The Dental School was a hive of activity, with students practicing their skills in labs, dental patients visiting clinics throughout the building, and expert teams of faculty teaching throughout the school, in the clinics, classrooms and labs. Dean Carol Anne Murdoch-Kinch, Director of Facility Operations & Auxiliary Services Adam Smith, and I started our tour with one of the newest additions to the school, the James J. Fritts, D.D.S., Clinical Care Center. With its 125 treatment operatories and bright, welcoming spaces, this center offers dental technologies such as clinical microscopes. Seeing students in the Simulation Lab helps you realize the focus and precision needed in dentistry. Each student had their own manikin patient, and they were placing fillings and crowns as the would in a human patient.

The school is undergoing a major renovation to modernize the Orthodontics Clinic, and it is also creating a new clinic for people with disabilities, along with a welcoming space to support student wellness and academic success. These are the kinds of updates that allow faculty and students to serve child and adult patients in more than 85,000 patient visits every year and ensure that even those who are underserved get the treatment they need to promote oral health and general well-being.

Just this morning, I spent time with Dean Karen Bravo at the McKinney School of Law and learned about the many ways the McKinney School’s faculty, staff, and alumni serves students as well as the community. McKinney graduates move the legal system forward in the state of Indiana, serving not only as lawyers and legal advocates but as judges, CEOs, legislators, and more. I learned that two U.S. vice presidents graduated from McKinney, a definite point of pride. I was delighted to meet with a number of McKinney students who are charting their next steps, working in the Internal Revenue Service’s general counsel office, clerking for Indiana Supreme Court Justices, serving with the Marion County District Attorney’s Office, and other important work.

I’ll close this week’s update with a big thanks to members of the Student Activities Programming Board, who worked with our team in Student Affairs on the Stuff-a-Plush event in the Campus Center. I met staff members and students—including Faith Odiete—who were as excited as I was about stuffing our own plush jaguars. Faith’s story was truly inspiring. She and her family came to the United States from Nigeria when she was in middle school. Faith told me she felt like an outsider at first, but—thanks to help from one of her teachers—her sense of belonging increased, and she started to excel.

Today, Faith continues to excel academically and otherwise, and she is getting ready to graduate with a degree from the O’Neill School. She is also a proud ROTC cadet and has the job of her dreams lined up. Faith credits her focus and success to her mother who raised her as a single mom, and she is also deeply grateful to the faculty and staff at our university who have helped her succeed and thrive.

Faith embodies the best we want in all jaguars and we are so proud to have her here.

Go Jags!

Latha Ramchand
Chancellor