Yolonda Williams, Ed.D.

Finishing my doctorate was hard because I stopped after my husband passed away in 2023, and then I tried to keep going, but all the words and reading were foreign to me. I couldn't grasp the concepts anymore, so I stopped altogether. But I knew I needed to finish because I needed to show my son that he can't quit stuff - he was my driving force for finishing that one. In general, I knew education was one of the ways to improve my life from a really young age. The Cosby Show was so much more than just a TV show to me - I wanted to aspire to that level of greatness. It wasn't just about being called doctor, because now I don't even like people to say that, but it was the achievement. I started this and I finished it - that process was what drove me. People say this is hard, but I got it, I can do it, I'm gonna finish it, and the journey and the growth that happens while you're in it is what drove me to keep going. I have no blueprint to look from because no one in my family has done any of those things academically. I have cousins underneath me that now I can help, and they have gone to school and graduated, which is great. I feel like I was put in positions to go through things first so that I could be helpful to other people. That's what drove me in financial aid when I first started - I had to learn it, and now I'm gonna make sure these students aren't confused or these parents aren't afraid. I've gone to school, I know what it's like to be a student and to teach, and I try to mesh those two things in my classes.

The best career advice I ever received is probably when I came home from Eastern and was working down at Bates. One of the people who I considered to be somebody that I could look up to told me that there was no way that I could work full time and finish - there's no way you can do that. I was just kind of taken aback by her, because of who I thought she was and all her accomplishments, and I thought you would have been a little bit more encouraging to me. I took that, I went, I finished, but I think that was the best advice that I ever got, because I always go back to that - how can someone tell you what you can't do? You never let someone tell you what you can't do. That's the advice that I hold onto, even though it's kind of negative, but it constantly pushes me to keep going. I'm really goal-oriented, so I feel like if I set a goal, I'm going to continue to work until I reach it, whatever that is - whether that's training for a run, or finishing a program, or learning this crazy assessment. I'm going to figure it out. That is what drives me.

I would say connect with someone who's doing something that you want to do, and not just LinkedIn friendships. I'm talking about meet with them, talk to them, share what you want. No one knows what you want to do but you, and so you have to communicate those things, but you have to have the verbiage to do it. Sometimes people are like, oh yeah, I wanna get my degree, and I'm like, in what? In business. For what? What do you want to do with it? You have to see yourself somewhere. I never saw me in a classroom - I had two black teachers my entire life. One was in second grade, and the other was at Eastern. If you don't see yourself in different spaces, you can't imagine yourself in those places. You gotta be comfortable being the only or the first, you know, hopefully that doesn't last, but you have to be comfortable with it, because there's not a whole bunch of us in this space.

I think the biggest challenge is AI, and not AI itself, because that's not new - we've had calculators and Siri and cell phones - but it's the way that they're using it and the ramifications of it. There are environmental issues surrounding AI and their data centers, and where they're placing their data centers. Academically, it's about how students are using it. Is it the institution's responsibility to show students how to use it responsibly, or prevent them from using it at all, which we know that's not gonna work? Right now, every school is kind of trying to come up with guidelines for the use, because I've completely gone away from discussions, because you just get a whole bunch of regurgitated information from a chat GPT or something like that. Students are losing their voice in there. I don't think they understand the importance of their voice. We're already dealing with COVID kids who are used to being in the house and not outside, and there's so many layers to what happened in those couple of years. We haven't really caught back up, and so trying to figure out ways to help them continue to learn and be comfortable in that struggle of critical thinking - that's the challenge. The biggest opportunity is just continued growth. I'm super big on continuous improvement - I'm always trying to learn a new tool, or my son hits me on this new software that they're using at school that I can use in my class. I'm always looking for new, creative ways because this institution that I'm a part of was not created for me. I need to be able to take information and apply current events. Anyone looking to come into education needs to keep learning, because the tendency is you get a job, and if it's a tenure-track position, they achieve that milestone and then get comfortable. But tenure achievement is the beginning, it's not the end. Now the work starts - you got through the probationary period, now you have to show what you've learned and what are you gonna do with this new ability that you have. Always come in with open eyes and eager to learn, because you can never learn everything. Every day, you should put yourself closer to learning something you didn't know yesterday.

I'd say honesty is one of the most important ones. Being consistent in all things - with your word, be consistent, your actions, your behaviors. Because when you start changing up on people and situations, it doesn't look right. Your integrity is all you got. So I'm very conscious of the words and the language that I choose to use. That's valuable to me. Family's valuable to me. My health, my faith - all of those things mean a lot.