The Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity welcomes Gavin Bell as a new assistant director in Multicultural Student Affairs. Bell is from Durham, North Carolina and earned his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also a member of the Lumbee Tribe and maintains strong community ties to his tribal homeland of Robeson County, North Carolina.
Bell earned his Master of Education in higher education administration from NC State in the spring of 2021. Prior to that, he has been involved professionally in multiple areas of education and student support.
From 2017 to 2019, Bell served two years with the Carolina College Advising Corps, which works to serve underresourced high schools in North Carolina by providing access and support for students desiring to pursue higher education upon graduation. From this experience, Bell has gained substantial knowledge of directly supporting a variety of populations, including (but not limited to) first-generation, undocumented and those in housing-insecure circumstances.
Beyond this, Bell also served as a resident director with NC State’s University Housing. In this role, he was responsible for directly supervising resident adviser staffs, assisting in building programming, maintaining community budgets and providing support for first-year students across three campus residence halls. This experience enabled Gavin to gain genuine insight into the NC State campus community and allowed him to strategically prepare to engage and support the student populations that he will come across in his work for Multicultural Student Affairs.
As he transitions into the assistant director position, Bell says he is excited to continue fostering relationships across different campus communities. Through his time as a master’s student, he has become aware of many student organizations and has already helped to create rapport through collaborated workshops and programming during the past two years. Ultimately, providing equitable support, relational care and a foundation of trust are some of the focal points that he hopes to achieve, and he is looking forward to the opportunities ahead as he steps into this new role.