Policy analyst works to create positive environment

It’s hard not to be touched by the positive aura that flows around Hazel Symonette.

Areas inside and outside of her upper-level Bascom Hall office are covered with posters, flags and plaques bearing messages of strength, diversity and encouragement, such as, “Let us join our hearts and hands to build a better world.”

Photo of Hazel Symonette sitting in her office surrounded by stacks of paper and books.

Hazel Symonette, senior policy and planning analyst for the Office of Human Resource Development and the Equity and Diversity Resource Center, sorts papers in her office in Bascom Hall. Photo: Michael Forster Rothbart

She greets colleagues with a handclasp or hug and wishes for a happy new year. Even her outgoing voice-mail message leaves callers with wishes of “peace and good spirits be with you, as we claim a progressive vision in the new millennium.”

So it’s fitting that her career on campus also revolves around creating a positive environment for students, faculty and staff, particularly as the university strives to become more diverse and inclusive.

Symonette is a senior policy analyst in the offices of the Dean of Students and Human Resource Development with continued affiliations with the Equity and Diversity Resource Center. She has spent more than 30 years on campus as a doctoral student, dissertator, research and teaching assistant, and statistics-research methods tutor. She has held many roles on campus, as well as with the state, city and community during that period.

But she can sum up her current mission in a crisp, almost mantra-like statement: “Creating authentically inclusive and vibrantly responsive teaching, learning and working communities that are conducive to success for all,” she says.

In the 1990s, Symonette used her background in social justice work and systematic change research to manage the program information, evaluation and reporting system supporting the UW System’s statewide diversity strategic plan.

After leaving UW System in 1998, she began working in the Office of Quality Improvement and then the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, working in program development and as an assessment-evaluation facilitator and consultant.

Her greatest joy and contribution comes from the roles that she has played in creating diversity-grounded personal and professional development opportunities for the campus community.

Symonette has been instrumental in developing “campus workforce learning communities” such as the UW–Madison Leadership Institute, the Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED) program and the Seeking Education Equity and Diversity by Experienced Doers (SEEDED) program.

These small-group sessions provide environments in which students, faculty and staff can openly express ideas, thoughts and concerns related to diversity and multiculturalism, with the expectation that the give-and-take will promote better understanding and change that can be carried back to others.

“One of the reasons I have so much passion around these issues is that climate concerns have been a major blind spot,” she says. “Increased access is only step one. Otherwise this default message prevails, regardless of intent: ‘Come join us and be just like us.’ Authentic inclusion calls upon us all to ‘stretch and flex’ in order to fully engage each other in ways that allow each of us to bring forward our best selves in full voice. That doesn’t happen by chance or osmosis.”

In 2002, Symonette founded UW–Madison’s Excellence Through Diversity Institute, a group designed to provide support and networking for those working on the front lines of diversity issues across campus.

EDI emphasizes that this work is a lifelong journey for everyone. “The deeper you go, the more you realize that there’s more and more you don’t know,” Symonette says. “The goal is simple: How can we help ourselves and others bring forward our best selves to do our best engaging, learning and work?”

She’s heartened by some of the changes that she’s seen during the past 30 years, but she knows that the effort is never-ending.

“Our diversity plan (Plan 2008) and our strategic plan are not on parallel tracks,” she says, which is a sign of progress. “There are crosswalks there, but work remains to put wheels under that effort. And everyone needs to realize that it’s necessary work, not optional.”

Symonette says it was never her intention to have stayed as long as 30 years in Madison and on campus, but she continues to feel drawn to the importance of her work. It’s not always easy work, but she can sum up the reason why she’s stayed by recounting the “starfish story,” which is central to EDI’s protocols.

Walking along a beach strewn with thousands of starfish, a man sees a boy picking them up one by one and throwing them back into the ocean to save them from dying in the sun.

The man asks the boy why he bothers, because there are so many and he can’t possibly reach them all. “You can’t possibly make a difference,” the man says.

The boy silently picks up another starfish and throws it into the ocean, and says, “I made a difference for that one.”

Symonette says that she is always striving to really make that difference on campus.

“Despite many challenges and disappointments during my long years of service, I remain resolutely committed because I believe that every experience is a lesson or a blessing,” she says. “Even the ugliest lessons can ultimately be transformed into blessings for the greater good.”