The DEI Champion Spotlight features Rowan community members who are leading the way in DEI initiatives across campus. Champions featured in the spotlight serve as a great example of how DEI can be reflected throughout the campus. Meet Nyds Rivera, a queer/nonbinary Latino student and senior Writing Arts major in the 4+1 program, with concentrations in Creative Writing and Publishing & Writing for the Public and minoring in both Psychology and Spanish.

A faculty member nominated Nyds Rivera, stating, "Nyds is serving as the inaugural DEI Intern for Rowan University's Ric Edelman College of Communication & Creative Arts (CCCA) and is doing an incredible job writing stories about DEI around the college, you can find the blog here. They are also working on building a CCCA student organization for DEI." 

Nyds Rivera 

Tell us about yourself:

My name is Nyds Rivera, and I am a queer/nonbinary Latino student! I’m a senior Writing Arts major in the 4+1 program, with concentrations in Creative Writing and Publishing & Writing for the Public, as well as two minors in Psychology and Spanish. I’m pretty much all over the place in the department, from working in the Writing Center to being an Assistant Editor for Avant Literary Magazine (a publication featuring undergrad work) and plenty of things in between. I absolutely love writing, as I’m sure is obvious from my involvement, but in my free time, I also love music. I play guitar (albeit quite poorly) and am a bit of a concert enthusiast. 

I’ve been the DEI intern with the College of Communications & Creative Arts for a year now, and during that time, I have been running our College’s DEI blog. This blog is a great space for us to promote student and faculty DEI work within the College and running it has been a great experience so far! As another part of this internship, I’ve also been working with the College to develop a DEI-centric student group for the CCCA. This group would function as a way to build community among marginalized students in the CCCA and provide educational resources related to issues surrounding DEI in our field. We’re hoping to have the group up and running later this year! 

Why is DEI Work Important? 

We’re privileged to attend college in a time when student demographics are more diverse than ever, and institutions are beginning to work to bring down the traditional systems that have kept POC and other marginalized students out of higher education. This means we must work to ensure that our voices are heard, and our needs are met. DEI work is important on all levels, whether we are leading actual movements to further accessibility and inclusion or simply highlighting the individuals working behind the scenes. While awareness and visibility are increasing, there is still quite a long way to go in terms of DEI in higher education and our own Rowan community. Anything we can do to help lift each other up is worthwhile…even essential. 

DEI Resources you would like to share:

One account I'd like to share is @alokvmenon on Instagram, who is a great nonbinary POC influencer who writes about issues affecting and history surrounding queer people!