The Summer Olympics had just finished their two-week run in Paris. Roland Davis, like so many around the world, had watched some of the Games, and couldn’t help but be struck by what he saw.

 “It’s the awe that I experience watching these athletes,” said Roland, the interim director of the Loomis Chaffee Center for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. “Most of us have no idea what it is like to dedicate ourselves to one single thing for years and years and years — and with a level of dedication that is almost superhuman. So, it is out of respect for that dedication and the inspiration I draw from watching them do amazing things.” 

“And it is the sportsmanship,” Roland continued as work was being done in Chaffee Hall to create a newly envisioned space for the center. “As a former [track athlete], I love seeing athletes from different countries support one another, cheer for one another, and fundamentally respect one another. It helps me see that sport is a bridge across difference. That we can all cheer for the same thing, that we can all be a part of the same thing, that we can be competitors, but at the end of the day there is more that we have in common than actual differences, and the Olympics are a good reminder of that.” 

This is the mindset that Roland will bring to his work this year as the center’s interim director and a special assistant for inclusive excellence to Head of School Jody Reilly Soja. His goal is for the center to “serve people in a variety of ways, whatever their needs might be.” He said he will listen to what the students, faculty, staff, and alumni feel the needs are, and build the work through those conversations.

Roland has a bachelor's degree in history and sociology from Bates College, a master's in social work from Boston College, and a doctorate in education from the University of New Hampshire. He has more than three decades of experience working in higher education and independent school settings, ranging from The Masters School to Harvard University and Bates College, his alma mater that he says helped make him the person he is today.

“Bates was one of the first places I felt I could be my authentic self and not be judged for it,” Roland said. “It is really the first time that I experienced what I would come to describe as the life of the mind. The expectation that you were going to engage with questions, be in conversation with people who had different ideas than you. Not that you were trying to convince somebody of something or find middle ground, but you’re exchanging ideas, and that became fun for me. So, this combination of being in a diverse and supportive environment that really did foster a love of learning is probably what has influenced me the most in my life.” 

That diverse environment was not the case in his early days of education. He grew up in Boston before his family moved just outside of the city to Newton, Mass., in the late 1970s. Roland says he remembers being either the only Black or one of a few Black students in his class.

“It was hard to bring my lived experience into the conversation because it was not necessarily seen as valid or important because it was not the mainstream,” Roland said. “I think we know a lot more now than we did back then about students, student engagement, how students of different identities live and learn together. So, I dare say the experience has gotten better, by no means perfect, but from my vantage points as a kid in elementary, middle, and high school, it was difficult. And I think in some ways that is why I am doing this work because I don’t want students to feel like it is as difficult for them as it was for me. That seems horribly self-serving ... but the work is in service of the students."

"If my experiences can benefit someone else, then why not?" Roland continued. "If I can help somebody navigate that terrain because I have already walked that road, then why not? So as daunting as my experience was, as uncomfortable it was, as painful as it was at times, it has certainly shaped me and shaped my desire to do this work in support of students so we can continue to make progress in helping students who are a numerical minority in any environment be successful and thrive academically and socially.”