Ever since she helped make signs for the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike as a young girl in Tennessee, Andrea Y. Simpson has been passionate about equal rights. She vividly remembers walking in Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last march for the cause in her hometown. Just one week later, he was assassinated.

“I think the experience of being involved in that effort, it set the course for me,” Simpson said. “I was always thinking about issues of social justice and fairness from there forward.” 

She joined the University of Richmond in 2004 as a scholar of U.S. politics with concentrations in Black politics and the politics of gender and intersectionality. Simpson was recently named the inaugural associate dean of Thriving, Inclusivity, Diversity, and Equity (TIDE) for the School of Arts & Sciences.  

“To me, thriving means a sense of belonging and a feeling that you're growing, you're getting better,” she said.

She actively works with faculty to create inclusive teaching strategies and ensure candidate pools for new faculty are diverse in a myriad of ways.

“For thriving and inclusivity to exist, we have to understand the mechanisms of implicit bias,” Simpson said. “I think about what community members are doing that promotes inclusivity and creates a space for students, faculty, everybody, to get to know each other better. If we're going to have a sense of belonging, then it's hard to do if you're just relegated to a narrow group of people with whom you associate.” 

TIDE partners with groups across campus to host workshops on inclusive practices and creating a safe and equal environment for everyone. 

“I am happy to be a listening ear,” Simpson said. “The real purpose of a liberal arts education is for you to have your little world shaken up a little bit. Meet different people with different faiths, different backgrounds, different experiences, and in doing so, find out more about yourself, what you want to do, what you want to be, how you want to move in the world. All of these things help you.”

Her goal for TIDE is to promote a framework for inclusive excellence, an ongoing effort by the University.  

“That sort of ameliorates the tendency to be with people that we're very comfortable with or we think we're going to be comfortable with,” she said, “to have a more curious, open and adventurous kind of campus.”