Today: Mar 28, 2024

Lambert wants to build community amongst students

Abby Epstein – News Writer

With 10 years of experience with diversity and inclusion, Ame Lambert is one of the four candidates left for the position of Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Southern.  

“I am very greedy when it comes to this work. I have very high aspirations and I’m very ambitious when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion work, because I think our students deserve it. I think our colleagues deserve it. I think our organizations deserve it,” said Lambert.  

Everywhere Lambert has worked there have been programs that support student’s success and retention. “Student access and success is really important to me and I think it’s the reason we work in higher ed. For us administrators it’s the heart of the work that we do,” said Lambert.  

 Lambert enjoys building communities with students. She has brought law students and undergrads into her house in order to build that community. “It impacts students sense of belonging, they feel like they aren’t alone, they feel other people understand their experiences,” said Lambert.  

 The students who attended the forum liked how forwardly she answered questions. They said she did not shy away from tough questions.  

 What stood out to me the most was her ability to tackle questions that seemed unfavorable at face value,” said SGA representative Noah Falcioni, a freshman. “She answered in an honest way which gave her a ton of credibility and respect in my book.” 

 Early childhood education major Maya Zauberman, a graduate student, also agreed that Lambert answers question honestly. “She seemed to be very transparent about everything and she was very frank, which was quite nice,” said Zauberman 

 Lambert wants to help students across the whole campus which is one reason she is interested in the Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Southern. My career progression was really about the opportunity to have a greater impact,” said Lambert. 

One of her strengths is in integrated thinking and she said she plans to bring this to Southern.

I’m interested in looking at radically different disciplines and integrating them and synthesizing them,” said Lambert.  

One of the biggest challenges she faces with her job is that in some way it will become personal.

“People don’t recognize that is has become personal, iyou’re not in a space where you’re confidently checking in with your inner self,” said Lambert.  

 Lambert enjoys her job and always looks to help students out but, “there is no way to do the work without emotion, no way to do it without conflict and no way to do it without, frankly, some tension.”

 She said she has a way of overcoming the challenge of it becoming personal“I try to navigate this is just by having multiple entry points, so if a person is not ready to talk about social justicewhat are the things they are ready to talk about when they talk about students success?” said Lambert.   

 She said she is always learning in her job and she mentioned that it has made her lens broader and more complexIn some ways this work is always personal, and I continue to learn and develop around that.”  

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Latest from Blog