Assistant Director for the Cultural and Community Centers, Virginia Tech

So, my name is Joe Frasier, and I am the Assistant Director for the Cultural Community Centers. How that job plays out is, I am the Assistant Director for the Asian Cultural Engagement Center. So it's one of six community centers that we have throughout our department. The Asian Cultural Engagement Center just came online this year. And I also, so on top of running that center, I also advise three other student organizations, The Jewish Student Union, The Muslim Student Union, and the Asian American Student Union. But the main thing of our cultural community centers, is they function as spaces for students from marginalized backgrounds, here at Virginia Tech. The spaces are really inclusive for whoever wants to use them. But specifically, they're main mission is to serve as a home away from home for the many different students that we find here at Tech. So we do a lot of programming around diversity and diversity awareness. We manage a different History and Heritage Months. So, specifically, since I advise the Asian American Student Union and the Jewish Student Union, I help plan the History and Heritage Months. So we have Jewish Cultural Awareness month in April, and Asian American Pacific Islander History and Heritage month in May, middle of April and May. So I also plan those two History and Heritage Months as well. For the most part, I like to defer to the students, as far as what are some events that you would like to see. What do you think the general population needs to know most about your culture at this point in time. And then how can I help the students make that dream happen. Last year, for Jewish Heritage month, we had Rabbi Nissen Mengel come, and he gave a great lecture and talk in the Moss Arts Center. He's one of the last remaining, you know, the fewer, each year there's fewer and fewer Holocaust Survivors. So he came and spoke about his experiences and what he would recommend to the youth, and things like that. So we usually try to do one big speaker to come for each of these different Heritage Months. We also have open office hours. So again, I advise three different student orgs, and my door is usually always open for planning between the three orgs. What they want to do, right? Or if there's students that need to come in and have a conversation, or maybe they're experiencing something that they need help with, or someway I can help. We also handle bias incident reporting, through our office. So if students experience some form of bias on campus, helping them with that. Today, for example, I gave a presentation in one of the leadership courses at Virginia Tech. So there's a string of things that our days can look like. (silence)