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  • Academic advisor seeks to empower younger women

Academic advisor seeks to empower younger women

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Quiana Preston is an academic advisor in the Office of Student Success and Advising at IU Kokomo. She has a seat in The Red Chair to talk about her job and how she uses it to empower women of color. 

KOKOMO, Ind. – Quiana Preston never saw herself going to college when she was growing up.

“Nobody in my household had a college degree,” she said. “I didn’t have anyone who looked like me early on in my life. When I took my first professional position, I began to see leaders and mentors who looked like me. I learned so much about myself as a woman, as a black woman. They were very intentional about helping me understand my role as a black woman, and what I could do to impact others.”

Now, as an academic advisor at Indiana University Kokomo, she views it as her responsibility to be a role model to underrepresented students — in particular, to women of color.

“For me, seeing someone else striving for that, of my same ethnicity, it brings some empowerment. You have that cumulative effect of not feeling some important, and you start feeling like you’re one step closer to not being able to accomplish something,” she said. “Then you start to see other people who look like you, and you feel empowered, like you can do it.” 

While her job is to coach them for academic success, Preston strives to help them think creatively about their future plans. 

“I mentor young women all the time, especially about their dreams, and more importantly about relationships,” she said. “I want them to know their worth, and it’s not about somebody coming to rescue you, but someone to come be a teammate with you. Everything you need is inside you, if you know who you are.”

She also feels “a heavy burden” of responsibility to set the example for her young nieces.

“They are the young girls of the world for me,” she said. “They are very impressionable, and they talk to me about the things that are going on in high schools, things I didn’t have to experience when I was their age. I feel like everything I do, they look up to me. Whenever I make a decision, I think, would they gain from this?” 

Preston calls herself lucky to have grown up in Kokomo, surrounded with a core group of female friends and a strong faith community at her church youth group. She hadn’t envisioned herself going to college, after being in classes for children with learning disabilities as a child. 

“I thought I’d be married with kids, a soccer mom, a PTA mom,” she said. “I can just say that every day an opportunity came my way, for every ‘no’ I gave, I gave a ‘yes’ the next time, and then my ‘yeses’ became stronger, and I began to know this is who I was, and what I do.”

She followed up her bachelor’s degree in communication with a master’s in higher education administration, before taking her first professional job in Illinois. Later she earned a Ph.D. in strategic leadership, to satisfy her curiosity about what leadership is. Her focus was on empathetic leadership, studying how understanding the needs of others impacts leadership.

Those are skills she uses daily as an academic advisor, working with students majoring in sciences and criminal justice, and also those still deciding their major.

“You have to empathize with the students,” Preston said. “They come in with all kinds of stories and experiences. Sometimes you want to take on the mother role, and that’s where the coaching comes in. You learn to stay outside the role of mother, asking questions to help them facilitate their own discovery.”

Preston believes it is important to have a Black History Month, to remind everyone how African Americans have impacted the world. 

“It’s needed because of the fact there has been so much absence of appreciating the contributions of our culture, and what we’ve done,” she said. “Not only because of that absence but to remind us all, not just those from the majority, but everybody, of the type of impact and influence different cultures have had on the world.

“It’s awareness, and allowing people to focus on the fact there are so many contributions that come from so many different people, and let’s not forget it.”

Normally, The Red Chair is randomly placed around the IU Kokomo campus. Anyone walking by is free to sit down, get comfy, and share their experience about IU Kokomo. This edition is part of a focus on Black History Month. Watch the video with audio description.

Description of the video:

Quiana Preston, Academic Advisor for Sciences, Criminal Justice and Undecided majors sits in the Red Chair in the library. Calm, upbeat music plays in the background.  

She speaks to us saying “my name is Quiana Preston, and I am an academic advisor. I advise for the school of sciences, criminal justice and me and another partner work with exploratory students. I feel like, you know, life here at IUK is progressive, intentional, thoughtful. People really do care about students, I mean they fight hard. You know, I come from a home where nobody in my household had a college education. For me, seeing someone else strive for that that’s of my same ethnicity, it sort of brings some empowerment, and so all of that  cumulative effect of not feeling so important to the daily struggle, I call it fatigue, battle fatigue, some people coined it as racial battle fatigue, whatever that could be, for any one person, but both these different cycles everyday you feel like you’re one step closer to not being able to accomplish something but then you start to see people who look like you and you start to feel empowered and you start to feel like you can do it.” 

She continues “I definitely have seen that with a lot of the young African American women who have come into my office. I mentor young women all the time, especially just about their dreams, more importantly about relationships, knowing their worth, knowing that it’s not about someone coming to rescue you but about someone coming to be a teammate with you. Know who you are, everything you need is inside of you. I have a young woman in my mind right now who has had a rough life, and because of the fact that I have been able to tell her my story and her to see that I look like her she has said to me that she feels like she can make it now. I feel like I can do it. I’m not a star struck person at all, but when I see one person in the world that has inspired me just by watching her is Michelle Obama. I mean, I am certainly not star struck, if anything I would rather be star struck by my mother, because she’s my hero. I’m not really someone who loves the Hollywood scene or whatever, but the strength that I see in Michelle Obama, not even knowing all her initiatives, that really inspires me to be better, and better for those that I have to interact with.” 

The Red Chair at Indiana University Kokomo 

Watch more red chair videos

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