Tennessee Tech launches new Office of Access, Belonging and Community Outreach
From left: Graduate assistants Lia Nesbitt, Autezia Sellers and Xavier Washington,
Tech President Phil Oldham, Senior Executive for Access and Community Outreach Robert
Owens, Recruitment Specialist Maria Baltazar and Department Coordinator Margo Dirkson.
Tennessee Tech University has launched a new office focused on helping Golden Eagles
find their place to land on campus.
The Office of Access, Belonging and Community Outreach is a cabinet-level division
reporting directly to the university president that, according to an office one-pager,
“works to create a campus climate where all people are respected and valued, and everyone
has an opportunity to find connection and belonging.”
The office is helmed by four-time Tech graduate and longtime campus leader Robert
Owens. “Dr. Rob,” as he is known to many at the university, has accumulated nearly
20 years of staff and administrator service at Tech.
As the new senior executive for access and community outreach, Owens is tasked with
building on Tech’s longstanding culture of kindness and sense of connectedness – a
cause to which he has dedicated his career, even before leading an office with that
expressed purpose.
“We want to make sure that anyone who is hired or chooses to enroll at Tennessee Tech
feels a sense of welcome and authentic belonging at the university,” said Owens. “We’re
going to promote kindness and we’re going to endeavor to see the unseen student, staff
member and faculty. To do that, we’ve got to engage with the entire campus.”
To that end, Owens and his team hosted an “accessibility awareness day” earlier this
year, before the new office’s formal launch, to elevate the voices of differently-abled
members of the university community, especially those with mobility challenges. Owens
says the university can expect similar programming in the future.
“We’re designed very much to work across the university, with offices within the Division
of Student Affairs – Intercultural Affairs, the Accessible Education Center, the Counseling
Center – with Academic Affairs and places like the Gretta Stanger Center, with Human
Resources, and so forth, to integrate a message of kindness across all areas of campus,”
Owens explained.
Robert Owens, senior executive for access and community outreach, speaks at the open
house event for Tech’s new Office of Access, Belonging and Community Outreach while
students, faculty and staff look on.
Tech marked the new office’s arrival on campus with a recent open house, where students,
faculty and staff could interact with Owens and his team in a conversational setting.
With that event behind him, Owens is now focused on the office’s next task: disseminating
a campus-wide climate survey, which he hopes to finalize within the coming weeks.
The optional survey will seek to gauge student, faculty and staff perceptions about
belonging and accessibility at Tech.
“I’m excited about this because it will give us baseline information that we can use
to better inform our work,” said Owens. “We need to understand how people are feeling
and what their personal experiences are. This is a great way to measure that.”
To carry out the office’s mission, Owens has assembled a staff that includes Margo
Dirkson, department coordinator, and Maria Baltazar, recruitment specialist, along
with multiple part-time graduate assistants. Dirkson has served the Tech community
for more than eight years while Baltazar is a proud Tech alumna and former local K-12
educator.
The Office of Access, Belonging and Community Outreach is in room 232 of the Roaden
University Center and can be reached via email at belonging@tntech.edu.