UNLV President Keith E. Whitfield will help the Graduate College launch its new speaker series, My Professional Origin Story, on Oct. 4 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Barrick Museum of Art Auditorium. The event is open to the entire UNLV community and will also be livestreamed on YouTube. The series highlights the professional journeys of UNLV faculty and administrators.

“We created this speaker series to share the stories of our campus leaders and better understand how they got here. We want to know how their journeys unfolded – and what we might learn from their experiences to better prepare us for our own journey ahead,” said Alyssa Crittenden, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate College. “We are honored to have our own President Whitfield share his journey as our first speaker in the series.”

Ahead of the event, President Whitfield shares a bit about his journey below.

What are a few of the defining moments of your educational journey?

• As a new undergraduate, I once almost fell asleep and fell out of my chair in a class. To make sure it didn’t happen again, I started participating in class and ended up with an A in the class, but I had started out with an F.
• After taking a postdoc position at the University of Colorado Boulder, I returned to my graduate school. I was walking across campus and met a faculty member who had made several racist and disparaging comments about me when I was a student. When I ran into him while walking across campus, I told him about my postdoc. His mouth dropped in surprise. That taught me that I could persist and be great.
• When I interviewed at Wayne State University to be the provost, I heard the president there state the importance of student success. It helped me realize how passionate I was about student success. From that moment on, I have dedicated my career to contributing to student success.

Describe a time when a mentor made an impact on your life.

As I entered college, I was offered the opportunity to be a biomedical research assistant; but as I arrived on campus, my mentor told me that freshmen could not participate. He thought it was unfair and went to Washington, D.C., to petition for me to be allowed. He was successful, and I was the first Minority Biomedical Research Support (MBRS) freshman student in the history of that program. This changed my entire trajectory and fueled my passion for research!

If you could give advice to a younger version of yourself, what would you say?

Don't think you are lesser than anyone else. Don't let the perception of others or your own past define you.

Can you share a few words about the photo that you selected to highlight your story?

That picture came from a tough year in my childhood. My dad was in Vietnam (with the U.S. Air Force), and we took that picture so that he had one of all of us. It is one of the few pictures I have of all my siblings from when I was a kid.