The Student: What brought you to Springfield College?
Dieujuste: “I was at another institution and I was looking for a change. I really was looking for a close knit community, a community that values students, and a residential experience. When I started searching for a position, Springfield really appealed to me in so many ways. When I did my interview, one of the things that really stood out to me was that half of my search committee was made up of students, and that told me something right away. This was the first time in my professional journey, having been at five or six institutions prior to Springfield College, where I actually was interviewing for a position, and half of the people who were tasked to hire me were students.”
The Student: What does your day-to-day look like?
Dieujuste: “No day really looks exactly the same. In my position as the Vice President for Campus Life and community engagement, I oversee the core curricular learning experience, which means the students experience outside the classroom. We know that most students spend most of their waking hours outside of the classroom, and so we provide the support and services needed for them to be successful”
The Student: How do you go about creating a campus environment where everyone feels supported?
Dieujuste: “It starts with making sure that students feel heard. We may not necessarily agree with students all the time, but they should really feel that they’re heard, that there are people that they can go to to express themselves. It also means to me that we get to know our students on an individual basis, and that happens in the residence halls,outside the residence halls, happens in the classroom and the clubs and that’s why I try to be as present as possible. I get to know our students, because their stories matter. They each come to campus with individual stories and experiences that we need to understand. If we are in the business of trying to make sure they’re successful, we can’t design programs that are just for some students. We have to think about the individual stories and the experiences and challenges that each of them face.”
The Student: What advice would you give to students who hope to one day make a similar impact in higher education or leadership?
Dieujuste: This is a field where people are passionate about student development and growth. They’re passionate about giving back, about educating the next generation. The advice I would give to students is that to be a good leader, it starts with being authentic and knowing who you are. And no matter what has happened in the past, I believe those things actually are designed to shape you into who you are. A lot of things that happened in my past, including being a bullying victim, and that really has shaped my leadership style in terms of how I approach every day, how I approach my staff, how I talk to people, because inclusion matters. I know so much about what it means to be excluded, what it means to be made fun of, so I go out of my way to make sure that people have a seat at the table and that they feel that their voice is heard.