In 2007 Vivia Hill-Silcott, a diversity coordinator in the College of Pharmacy, moved to Georgia; in 2008 she had a baby; and in 2009 she’s still not slowing down.
The Jamaica native has big plans for diversity within her college: she’d like a three-week summer program with an emphasis on sciences for underrepresented groups and a new Web site to make it easier for potential pharmacy students to find information on everything from ethnic hair salons to worship services to student groups.The New York transplant is still getting used to the Southern pace of life, but living in the area has taught her greater cultural competency, according to Hill-Silcott.
As diversity coordinator, part of her job is recruiting students from underrepresented groups to the college.
Once a month she goes to Clarke Middle School to talk to the seventh graders. She tells them about pharmacy college and about how newly graduated pharmacists often make more money than some lawyers fresh out of law school. She talks to them about everything from how to act in the cafeteria to career planning.
Going to the middle school is part of the college’s outreach program and what Hill-Silcott calls long-term recruitment.
“We’re driving home the message early to try and get them to start to think about pharmacy,” she said. “Because for many of the minority children, college may not be something that’s talked about at home.”
She stresses that while college is many years off for these students, it’s time to start preparing them.
“I firmly believe that if you expose children at an early age to different things then you’re planting a seed, you’re building a foundation for them to be successful, well-rounded, educated adults,” she said.
And once students get to UGA, she serves as a support for them, suggesting ethnic restaurants, writing recommendations or finding scholarships for deserving students.
“It’s an opportunity for me to continue to participate in that student growth and development that I pride myself on,” she said. “I’ve gone to so many weddings, so many baby showers, I’ve been in touch with so many students.”
Within the college, she plans diversity events, books speakers and works with the Student National Pharmaceutical Association, the multicultural student association. She works to bring awareness to diversity issues including skin color, disability and aging.
“With students learning so much more from their peers, it is vital for us to have diversity within the university,” she said. “When students get out of pharmacy school and work as practitioners, they’ll be encountering people from all walks of life. So it is important for them to learn to interact, support and get along with people from different backgrounds.”
Hill-Silcott enjoys recruiting students and recalls a time when she invited a group of young men from Augusta to campus. None of them had ever been on a college campus before and that day they heard presentations and then went to lunch at Snelling Dining Hall.
One of the young men told her that he was firmly committed to attending UGA. But what had sold him on being a bulldog wasn’t academics-but rather, the good food and pretty girls he saw in the dining hall.
Hill-Silcott wasn’t deterred that a top-notch education wasn’t the deciding factor for the young man.
“We just need to get them here,” she said. “I know how to keep them here.”
She also joked and said she was going to make sure the food was extra good in the dining halls when she brings students on future recruiting visits.
For current pharmacy students, Hill-Silcott enjoys hearing about how excited they are about internships or their work.
“To hear our students talk about the experience that they are receiving, it warms my heart,” she said. “When these students leave the pharmacy college, they’re going to be great
pharmacists.
“It makes me feel good that I’m able to go out there and tell people that they can come to a place like UGA,” she also said. “They’re going to encounter great faculty, going to work hard and going to get a quality education.”
Diversity is essential to a learning environment, according to Hill-Silcott.
“It makes sense for all of us to be different,” she said. “I don’t believe that there are any two individuals who are identical 100 percent.
“So it brings a level of richness to our community when we have people of different backgrounds, different cultures, different ethnicities, different languages,” she added. “We are going to learn so much more from a heterogeneous environment than we will from a homogeneous group.”
