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September 2004

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Now she is moving to a new responsibility, one that is close to her heart. She has been named assistant vice president for multicultural affairs, succeeding Dr. Edward Collymore, who retired this past spring. “I am standing on Ed Collymore’s shoulders,” Nance said. “He did an incredible job.”

Already, she has helped her staff settle into their new quarters in Dougherty Hall and made the space a welcoming one for students. She took time recently to talk about her transition from a department chair in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to a senior administrator.

She brings to the Center for Multicultural Affairs the perspective and experience of a senior member of the faculty “I am first, foremost, and always will be a faculty member,” she stated. “From that point of view, I have been able to nurture and develop wonderful relationships across the University. For me, achieving the goals of diversity has to be the job of everyone at the University.”

“My sons won’t walk across campus with me,” she laughed. “They say I know too many people. There is, however, a sense in which I want to deputize everyone to be part of our diversity goals.  And that’s why I accepted this new position. This is my time to make the connections with all the people I know here.”

Nance looks upon the work of the Center for Multicultural Affairs as one of education and process.  This year, for example, 65 African-American students will enter as freshmen. Is that something to celebrate? She believes it is, but cautions that it is just another step along the road of diversity, which she describes as a process rather than a goal.

While she does not have responsibility for hiring faculty, Nance is eager to see more diversity among the faculty -- and in the ranks of the professional staff, as well. It’s vital for the students, she believes, who are at the center of everything. “When students come to our University, they need to see people who look like them,” she emphasized. “I can’t tell you the number of students who would stop by for advisement when I was teaching. They weren’t communication students. They just felt comfortable. That is why diversity matters.”

Nance insisted that even though she is stepping out of the classroom, she will continue to teach. “It’s just that my students have changed. They are in boardrooms as well as classrooms, but I am still teaching, trying to get folks to look at and work at issues through new eyes.”

Nance says that she and everyone else need constantly to challenge themselves about what’s going on the greater world. “I cannot pick up a book on corporate communication and not see someone urging the reader to make sure you have the skills for communication interculturally or cross-culturally. African-American, Arab-American, we all have the same last name: American. If we cannot embrace the differences that are America, who are we to go overseas, which many of our students are going to do, to work in multinational, multicultural corporations and try to deal with that?”

On July 19, in her first official appearance as the new assistant vice president for multi-cultural affairs, Nance gave the keynote speech to the National Hispanic Institute’s Young Leaders Conference on campus.  The event, one of many created by the institute to groom future leaders in the Latino community, was designed to give high school students entering their sophomore year training and experience in researching topics, formulating arguments and competing with their peers in four different areas: oral interpretation, cross examination, mock trial, and extemporaneous speaking. In a word: debate.

This also was an activity close to Nance’s heart because all through her high school years in Cleveland and her college years at Emerson in Boston, she was an avid debater.  “I went to an all-girls high school, where we were trained to act like ladies, but debate was the one activity in which you could be as aggressive as you wanted to be,” Nance recalled. “It was an opportunity for me to be competitive and to be an intellectual, to begin to play with ideas. There was a bit of risk involved because you never knew what you were going to do until you were in the moment. And it was great to meet people who shared that passion. Even back in my day, it was a terrible geek-y thing to do. It took up every weekend.”

She says she regrets that debate is not popular, at least at the college level, because she believes it is a superb way for students to learn to use knowledge, gain poise, respect language, and learn to live the life of the mind out loud.

As Nance settles into her new role in multicultural affairs, she is aware that the diversity is always in a state of evolution. For example, in recent years, new challenges have arisen that have made person to person contact very impersonal: the ubiquitous cell phone and the Internet.
“Have you noticed that there aren’t as many people hanging at the Oreo as there used to be?” she asked.  “They’re back in their rooms on the phone or e-mailing their high school friends. We tend to think of diversity as getting to know the blacks and browns. Diversity is meeting another person who is from California or Montana, not just New Jersey. What we are changing is a mindset. We are opening doors here.”

Diversity is a matter of mission for Villanova, reflecting the philosophy of St. Augustine, who was a communicator himself, a rhetorician and an African.  Nance remembered pointing out that fact when she first came to Villanova. The response was: “He wasn’t that kind of African.” Looking back on her 26 years, she remembers that in the beginning, people talked around her, not to her. But she persevered and she had support, especially from the Rev. Kail C. Ellis, O.S.A., dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, of whom she said:

“Father Ellis has always supported my diversity activities and we did a lot. He really provides opportunities for people to stretch their limits, to be innovative, but also to be grounded in our students and what we have to give to them. We are so fortunate to have him.”