After 36 years of working at Gonzaga University and 44 years of service to Spokane, Associate Academic Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer Raymond Reyes has retired.
Reyes, who retired June 1, was a mentor, teacher and leader of multicultural literacy at GU. He said retirement is a chance to begin a new chapter, serving the Spokane community and exploring more about himself.
Reyes first found his love for Spokane when visiting his father at Fairchild Air Force Base for Expo ‘74, while attending Virginia Commonwealth University.
He later transferred to Eastern Washington University in Cheney, where he pursued psychology with a focus on experimental psychology and stress research with primates. He also conducted studies on the biological basis of behavior and obesity in mice.
Reflecting on his time at GU, Reyes spoke warmly of the Ignatian educational tradition.
“[Jesuit education] is based on liberal arts, the art of liberation, but it’s also got the faith and the justice piece and so many other aspects,” Reyes said. “That’s what I fell in love with at Gonzaga.”
Reyes said that while serving as an administrator, executive director and professor, he focused on both teaching the students and learning from them.
“The dominating pedagogy was being a talking head — just you’re the professor, you got the Ph.D., and you stand in front and you lecture,” Reyes said. “I wanted to know how people learn to learn, and then I wanted to line up my curriculum and how I taught, because I understood how what you teach becomes what you teach.”
As a whole, he said his time at GU was marked by a passion for teaching.
“Good teaching is becoming a disturber of the peace,” Reyes said. “I wanted to upset the status quo, be provocative and have students fall in love with the questions.”
Julie McCulloh, GU’s vice provost for enrollment management, said Reyes was able to teach her culturally and spiritually.
“He was never condescending, he was never dismissive, but he could challenge a person well,” McCulloh said. “I’ve had an appreciation for his unique set of gifts. He is so intellectual, but he’s so emotionally intelligent and able to bring people in.”
Reyes was also a founding member of the GU Center for the Study of Hate, originally the Institute for Action Against Hate. He said he worked to eradicate racism on campus by first studying the origins and effects of hate, as well as how to stand against hate.
He said his impact extended further than the GU community. He began at GU as both the administrative director of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe and as executive director of GU’s Northwest Indian Technical Assistance Center, where he assisted in Indian Education Training to over 200 school districts.
His involvement in Spokane’s equity and inclusion efforts led to producing three community TV shows: On Becoming Human, Tribal Voices and Diversity Works. All three were community access shows focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.
He was also the host of a podcast called “Intercultural Yoga.” In this podcast, Reyes focused on a person’s cultural context in relation to mental and physical harmony.
Since his retirement, Reyes has been spending time biking, kayaking and hiking. He said he intends to continue running and spending time outdoors and hopes to find more ways to help the Spokane community.
“[Retirement is] about desire and curiosity, and less about obligation, commitment or expectation,” Reyes said. “There is a radical freedom, getting to the root of who we really are as humans.”
Olivia Mowad is a staff writer.