Tina Gutierez-Schmich, Center on Diversity & Community (CoDaC)

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”  Tina Gutierez-Schmich works every day to create that beloved community, and our campus community is richer for her efforts.

Since 2007, Tina has worked at the Center on Diversity and Community as a conflict resolution specialist providing diversity focused  professional development opportunities for UO faculty, staff, and students.

Tina’s educational and work experiences have focused on diversity, education, and conflict resolution, and together they provide her with a wealth of personal knowledge about the conflicts that exist in educational and work settings.

As a woman of mixed race growing up in Idaho during the 1960s, Tina has stories to tell about racism and the role of education in harming or uplifting children and families. She has supplemented her personal lived knowledge of education, diversity and conflict with extensive professional education and training.

She has a number of degrees from the University of Oregon: a bachelor’s in Family and Human Services, a master’s in Public Policy and Management, and a master’s in Conflict and Dispute Resolution.

She’s not done.  Tina is currently enrolled in the doctoral program in Critical and Socio-Cultural Studies. 

Besides her work on campus, Tina also makes a difference in our wider communities. Last year she was responsible for developing a diversity coaching program with the Eugene 4J School District. She interviewed and helped 22 elementary school principals develop diversity focused  coaching plans. She was also part of a research team responsible for developing a diversity focused environmental scan for use in the 4J Elementary Schools.

Beyond the Center on Diversity and Community and the University of Oregon, Tina has worked at Head Start for 17 years.  She has seen first-hand how inequality and poverty affect  children’s ability to learn. She has been a social  justice advocate for children and families for more than half of her life, always as a frontline worker. And she’s done all this while carrying  a full-load  as a UO student for nearly fifteen years. 

In her life and work, Tina Gutierez-Schmich exemplifies the ideals and vision set forth by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is with great pleasure that we honor and thank her today.