Dr. David Mahatha, the new assistant dean of Diversity, Belonging and Community Engagement at the UConn School of Law, is committed to shaping environments where everyone can succeed and feel like they belong.<\/p>\n
That dedication gained force after he earned his master’s degree and started working in higher education. \u201cSomeone told me that if I wanted to be promoted, if I wanted to progress, I had to hide my identity as a gay man,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom that point on, I really wanted to make sure I created spaces where everyone had an opportunity to be successful, where everyone felt valued and really had opportunities to reach their full potential.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mahatha went on to work for 14 years at Central Piedmont Community College in student services and as director of equity, diversity and inclusion. He earned a Ph.D. \u00a0and served from 2022 to 2024 as director of inclusive excellence at the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law.<\/p>\n
At South Carolina, Mahatha focused on celebrating all members of the law school community instead of leaving that work to student organizations. He also organized Bridge to Law programs exposing middle school students, many from marginalized communities, to law school and to the possibility that they could become lawyers.<\/p>\n
\u201cTraditionally, the legal profession hasn’t been very diverse, but we can make it diverse, and there are pathways to it becoming more diverse,\u201d he said. \u201cI always talk about the difference between equity and equality. It’s not about giving everyone the same thing. It’s about giving everyone what they need to be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mahatha, who was selected after a nationwide search, believes an environment where everyone feels welcome and everyone belongs is the product of a vision shared by the entire community. \u201cI love it when everyone is engaged in this work,\u201d he said. \u201cI get to hear everyone’s voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
At UConn Law, he is planning to talk with as many people as possible \u2013 students, staff, faculty and alumni \u2013 to hear about their experiences and perspectives. \u201cThat\u2019s how we create our strategic diversity plan \u2013 by listening,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m thrilled that Dr. Mahatha has joined us to help advance our goals regarding diversity, belonging and community engagement,\u201d Dean Eboni S. Nelson said. \u201cHe brings considerable experience and skill to our law school and leadership team, and I look forward to working with him in this critical collaborative work to support, celebrate and elevate our students, community and profession.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mahatha\u2019s Ph.D. is in Organizational Leadership from Regent University and his MA is in Human Resource Development with a concentration in Adult Learning and Instructional Design from Clemson University. He also holds a BA in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Professional Certification in Diversity and Inclusion from Cornell University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ensuring that everyone on campus feels valued and bringing more diversity to the legal profession are at the core of his work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":215448,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1857],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1856],"class_list":["post-215430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-09 09:53:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215430"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215436,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215430\/revisions\/215436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/215448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215430"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=215430"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=215430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}