Double alumnus cultivates sense of belonging for students

When you’re an R.D. (residence director) at a university, there’s no typical day. Overall, though, you supervise R.A.s (resident assistants), make sure the building isn’t falling apart and try to give each student a sense of belonging.

“You make sure the students feel comfortable, because you never know what a student is going through,” said Arkel Brown ’19, M.A. ’21, the R.D. for Grantham and Miller residences. “The R.D.s are like the parents of the dorm.”

When he was an undergrad majoring in communications, he lived on campus all four years, so he knows the drill when it comes to residences halls. But, he hadn’t planned on the role basketball would play in his Messiah experience—women’s basketball, that is. Arriving as a first-generation college student from Washington, D.C., he’d planned to walk on the basketball team, but they didn’t have room for him.

So, he became the manager of the women’s team, working as a student assistant coach all four years of his undergraduate experience.

My intentions were to play for our men’s team, but, obviously, the Lord had something different for my life,” he said. “I come from a huge basketball family. My aunt, Jeri Porter, coaches women’s hoops [at Francis Marion University]. Whether I was sitting in her practices, working her camps or going to her games, I have always been around the women’s game.

He then became the first—and, so far, only—graduate assistant coach for the team as he pursued his M.A. in intercollegiate athletic leadership, which he completed in May. He’s now the assistant women’s basketball coach.

“It’s the best feeling knowing that Coach [Mike] Miller trusts me and loves me enough to keep me here for two years as a grad assistant and then offer me another spot as an assistant coach. I am blessed,” he said.

While Brown works to champion acceptance and belonging in the residence halls, he also realizes the challenge for student-athletes of color at a predominantly white university. To help, he recently helped launch the Messiah Student-Athletes of Color Council, a club where he serves as an advisor.

“For me, this is a huge milestone for Messiah athletics,” he said. “The club means that our student-athletes of color have another safe space for them to come and be themselves.”

With his recent graduate degree and new positions as R.D. and assistant coach, Brown remains fully immersed in the Messiah experience, helping students find their way.

— Anna Seip