Alumnus Promotes Inclusion,
Involvement with New Committee

By Sarah Lifton

The Chancellor’s Diversity Office has established significant relationships with many areas of our campus community.  This month, I would like to introduce you to one of our alumni partners.

As a minority student in a predominantly white and Asian high school, Otis Watson, ’76, a San Francisco native, had not intended to attend UC San Diego. A class president and state public speaking champion, he had options and had set his sights elsewhere. But a campus visit completely changed his mind. He went on to enroll at Thurgood Marshall College (then called Third College) and to double-major in communications and urban planning. He flourished in the diverse environment he found, manifest in the student body and the faculty and staff alike.

“I had experience working with diverse people before diverse became a term,” Watson, an assistant vice president at Comerica Bank in San Jose, says. “I really enjoyed UCSD because it was an environment I felt comfortable with.”

After graduation, he earned a law degree and returned to the Bay area to pursue a career in banking. Over the years, he was periodically drawn back to campus for special events. In April 2007, while taking part in the Life 101 conference, he was approached about joining the Alumni Association board of directors.

“At first I wasn’t going to get involved because I was already involved with a lot of other things,” Watson explains. “I didn’t need to be on another board or committee.”

He looked over the existing list of board committees, but nothing caught his eye. Then he noticed the various alumni affinity groups, for Chicano, African-American, gay and lesbian alumni and others. As far as he could tell, there was no connection between the groups and the association’s board of directors. With his undergraduate experience in the back of his mind, he began to shape a role for himself as chair of a new committee that would spearhead diversity and outreach efforts to alumni.

“In thinking it through, I realized if change is going to happen, it’s up to me to implement it—to throw the first stone to get things moving in that direction,” he says.

In the end, he agreed to join the board, but only if he could create the new committee. Its goal would be to establish a link between the board and the affinity groups, promote more diversity on the board, spark more volunteer involvement, and ultimately produce a more inclusive Alumni Association.

Since his first board meeting in October 2007, Watson has been working hard to get the Diversity and Outreach Committee up and running. The Alumni Association board has adopted a diversity statement, and the committee is mapping out a strategy for involving more diverse alumni in the organization. He is confident that the university’s commitment to a diverse campus community will ultimately produce results.

“UCSD is an outstanding organization,” he says, “but if you haven’t stayed involved, then you don’t know the wonderful things that the university’s been doing since you graduated. Being able to expound upon some those things to alumni will create a spirit of involvement and support. The fact that there is a chief diversity officer and Diversity Council says an awful lot about the commitment of the university. So do the Alumni Association’s diversity statement and diversity committee. These are the building blocks to try to create change.”