Helping Build a More Inclusive USN
As USN’s Director for Diversity and Community Life, Michael works with faculty, staff, parents and students of every age to help USN be fully inclusive.
Around school Michael is known for his seemingly endless energy and drive. Indeed, wherever you go on the USN campus, the odds are Michael Eatman is, was, or soon will be there as well.
Michael traces his awareness of diversity back to an experience in sports.
Michael traces his awareness of diversity back to an experience in sports.
As a teenager in New York City, Michael took part in pickup basketball games in Riverside Park. He remembers seeing people from all walks of life—doctors, lawyers, workers, drop outs—“all in this same environment… [all these] different backgrounds…enjoying this idea around a sport, which was basketball.”
New York, Michael says, gave him a “great chance to see diversity.”
In addition to having his eyes opened by life in his neighborhood, Michael’s perspective was broadened by trips taken with his school (which his father, a pastor, and his mother founded and ran). Michael’s parents saw it as part of their mission to expose the students to different peoples and ways of life. Through “course cultural trips” Michael and the other students were able to go to places such as Israel, Egypt, Senegal, Gambia, and other countries.
Michael got his undergraduate degree from Fordham University in psychology—a “long talk” with his dad that helped him focus in on the area of his greatest strength. Michael taught for ten years at the private school his parents founded in 1982.
Particularly because of the experience of helping his students cope with the events of 2001, Michael felt driven to look for answers and understanding in the larger world away from New York. Knowing that his fellow New Yorkers wouldn’t comprehend that he wanted to see other places, he told people he was on a sabbatical and went to Ann Arbor, Michigan to live with his brother, who was doing his post-doctoral work there.
In 2004 he and his brother gave a talk called “The Measure of A Man.” This talk led directly to Michael's getting a job at Spring Arbor University as an academic advocate providing tutoring and other forms of support.
His job was funded by the King, Chávez, Parks Initiative and was intended primarily for work with students of color. “Being on a predominantly white campus, students of color connecting with a person of color who could actually do something was new. As a consequence a lot of the students didn’t connect with me at first and I realized I had to do something.” It must have worked, because in 2005 he was offered the directorship of the program.
In this video, Michael talks about how Martin Sheen helped launch him in his job.
While he was working as a research assistant at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, he and a friend were both among the final five candidates for entrance into a combined program in education and psychology. He and his friend talked about what they would do if they didn’t get in. Michael, almost off the cuff, said he would probably become a massage therapist because it would satisfy his interest in holistic healing.
His friend got the post and Michael didn’t. “I remember being in the psychology building and looking over the banister…being kind of devastated. Then I remembered a minister who had talked about being in the proper reality and I found that comforting. So I wiped my little tears and said I am going to massage school….this is how I came to be doing massage and diversity at the same time.”
He even went so far as to approach the provost at Spring Arbor to propose creating a massage program there. “She said, ‘We have another idea, we have an office of multicultural affairs, would you be the director?’...Of course I accepted.”
Over time, he became acutely aware of how many kids came to university struggling. “Whether they were white, black, Asian, international, part of the gay community, Christian, or non-Christian, they were all struggling from all these tough experiences in K through 12.”
The situation caused him to ask an important question: What kind of difference would it make if he could get to the kids earlier…and help them overcome problems in the present rather than work on healing wounds from the past?
By happy coincidence, just as Michael was thinking of working with younger students, USN was beginning its search for a new Director of Diversity and Community life. Soon Michael was in Nashville for the interview. For him a pivotal moment in the process came from meeting a group of high school students. He was “blown away” by what they told him about their concerns with diversity and there was an immediate connection for him with the mission and direction of the school.
In these two videos, Michael talks about his typical day and about key areas in USN’s diversity program.
Prior to being at USN, Michael had worked mainly with college students, so he expected to have the most fruitful interactions with high school students. But to his surprise he discovered real pleasure in working with every age group. “It’s amazing to see the rich differences and ideas that come from working with all the students.”
What does Michael think surprises people most about him (other than his being a licensed massage therapist)? “That I can sing…really I can.”
