I wrote this column on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and thought about Dr. McKinley Boston’s mission to bring diversity to the Athletics Department at New Mexico State. Not just diversity of race and gender makeup but also diversity of opinion and beliefs. It’s the idea being that the greater number of perspectives and views of the goals that have been set out, the more likely the opportunity for growth on the part of the organization and the individuals therein.
There are obvious examples of this, DeWayne Walker is the second black head football coach at NM State and Marvin Menzies is the third black coach to head men’s basketball. But there are other examples of the NM State athletics’ diverse approach to this that you may be unaware of. There are several members of the staff, administrative and coaching that represent an international stripe in the department. Senior Woman’s administrator Maria Roth is a native of the nation of Canada. She isn’t the only resident of the great white north on the staff. Swimming and diving head coach Rick Pratt came south from Montreal to the Mesilla Valley and men’s basketball assistant coach Paul Weir, like Roth is a native of Toronto. Tennis assistant coach Carlos Vargas came to the United States from Venezuela.
The diversity doesn’t end with people from other lands. Part of diversity is putting the best person in the best job regardless of gender or traditional job hiring. Two excellent examples of that are Erin Steinkamp and Tiffany Franklin. Steinkamp is the head athletic trainer for the football team. She has to mend, patch and repair men all season long and does so with complete professionalism as the job requires. Franklin is the sports information director for men’s basketball. It wasn’t that long ago that women were not even allowed in the press box by order of the male dominated sports information and reporting fields. Franklin isn’t the first woman to work in sports information but is the first to head up a major men’s sport.
This is not an experiment that McKinley Boston undertook for social engineering it was a philosophy that began the first year he took the job. There was a daylong diversity workshop that all department personnel, coaches through secretaries took part in. The thinking was the more walls of misperception that can be knocked down, the more effective the lines of communication and the more harmonious and productive the work place. The reality of working in this environment is that you do become unconcerned about superficial differences between people that used to shackle a person’s thinking. Diversity isn’t the latest phase at the Fulton Center. It’s part of the department foundation.
Courtesy: New Mexico State University
