Tashia Bradley, the new associate dean of students and director of the Pugh Center, plans to “rebuild the Center and create a vision for the future.”

The Pugh Center was originally founded on Oct. 12, 1996, as “a central location for programs, activities and learning opportunities that promote intercultural communication and understanding,” according to the Center’s website. The idea for such a center came about after the Students of Color United for Change group made a presentation to the Campus Community Committee on March 9, 1994. Among their diversity initiatives was a request for a residential multicultural house. After a year of extensive research, the College decided that a “centrally located facility, dedicated to issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and religion, be constructed with common spaces and rooms for relevant student organizations.”

Bradley, who started the position on July 1, will be replacing Shontae Praileau, who resigned unexpectedly in the fall of 2010 after just three months at the College. The new director hopes to help the Center evolve, making “engage, explore and educate” its theme and guiding framework.

Bradley hopes to make the distinction between a Center and a space. “The Center should be the centering point for whatever the topic is—in this case diversity and multiculturalism. It should be beyond just a place to hang out and study. I don’t want the Center to only be associated with student groups and to be reserved as just a meeting space,” Bradley said. “On the flip side, I do want the Center to be a place where people naturally gather to interact—it should be a dynamic place where people can come study and have impromptu discussions about culture, race, religion, class and sexual orientation. It should also be a space where people can come and get resources from the director.” Bradley has much experience working in this field. She has a Ph.D. from Florida State University in history and philosophy of education. Her dissertation is entitled The Race to Educate: African American Resistance to Educational Segregation in Kentucky, 1865-1910. She was the director of the Black Cultural Center at Berea College, the first co-educational and racially integrated college in the Southern United States.

She was also the director of the Diversity, Gender and Leadership Educational Program at the New College of Florida, and the director of Multicultural Affairs and International Student Services at Millikan University. Bradley is in the process of writing a self-reflection book entitled, The Devil Sent You Here to Kill Me, a collection of stories relating to diversity.

“As we rebuild the Center, we will look at it as a support network and a social justice opportunity for students,” Bradley said. “We will establish new programs and services and work with the different student organizations.” Some of these new initiatives include the Pugh Center noontime lecture series, the diversity, dialogue and dinner events, the Thursday evening Pugh Center DVD viewings and the identity development workshops.

“There really is a science to this,” Bradley said. I want to make the Pugh Center the best Center it could be. Any entity should evolve with time, and I believe 30 years from now there should be no need for such a Center.”