Episode 122: Meet Our Dean of Students

Fany DeJesus Hannon serves as the Dean of Students and absolutely loves her job…and UConn students. A native of Honduras, she embraces her Latino heritage and applies it to how she and her office help Huskies succeed. The Dean of Students office works with virtually every area of campus to help undergraduates get the most of their college experience. Fany looks at college as a “family business” and encourages parents and guardians to be active participants at UConn. She has been part of the UConn family for 18 years and is the former director of the Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center. Fany even told us the Latino cuisine she like to eat when she visits her family in Florida!

Link to Episode 122 at Podbean

Transcript

Mike: Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the UConn 360 podcast. I’m Mike Enright from University Communications along with Izzy Harris. Good to see you again today.

Izzy: Yeah, you too, Mike.

Mike: So today, we’re a few weeks into the school year at UConn. Summer is over, and we’re very privileged to have Dr. Fany DeJesus Hannon, who is our Dean of Students here at UConn. She was named, Dean of Students, last May after serving in that role on an interim basis since November of 22.

She’s got a very busy job Dean of Students Office serves as a liaison with partners that support students throughout UConn, including student affairs, faculty, schools and colleges, areas like financial aid, provost, and the regional campuses, and she’s gonna tell us a lot about what she does and what her office,

She previously served as the director of UConn’s Puerto Rican, Latin American cultural center for over a decade. PRLACC as it’s known here at UConn. She’s a native of Honduras who came to the United States at the age of 20. she has an undergraduate degree from Smith college and a master’s degree from our own Neag School of Education here at UConn.

And she recently earned her doctorate degree from New England College. So Fany, thanks for joining us today.

Fany: Thank you so much.

Mike: Great to have you on the podcast. You have a very interesting story. Tell us a little bit about your background before you came to UConn, including coming to the United States at age 20.

Fany: Thank you. So I was born in a beautiful family from Honduras. I’m the oldest of three sisters. I came to the U. S. when I was 20. I did not speak the language, and that’s one of the pieces that I’m always very proud and grateful that I have learned. At age of 20, how to speak English, which is, in my opinion, one of the most difficult languages.

I went to Smith College. Prior to that, I worked at Miami Dade College for many years, in where I also pursued my associate in arts. I’m a product of a community college, which I love. I mean, my education, and I’m a first generation college student, the first one in my family to graduate from college.

My three sisters also graduated from college, and I do love my own research on sense of belonging and peer mentoring, and I love what I do. I love working at UConn, and I love working with our students.

Izzy: That’s such an interesting backstory coming from Honduras to here. Can you tell us a little bit more about what growing up in Honduras was like.

Fany: Yes, I grew up in a coffee plantation. My father was an agriculture engineer. And as an agriculture engineer he had, I mean, his own coffee plantation. So it was really nice to spend many days, I grew up in a very beautiful family, like I said before, but I think that what I remember the most about Honduras is our desire always as a family to serve others.

You know, the Honduran culture is instilled in us to serve others. be in as a collective thinking about one another. I miss my tortillas. I get to eat tortillas and with beans and coffee, obviously. But when I go home, Florida, where my family lives now, it’s really nice to reminisce of those times when I was a little girl and then a teenager.

Another piece that I that I missed about Honduras is when I went to college in Honduras, my major was journalism and communications. So it’s so interesting that even though my, my career path, took a different turn, I still have this soft spot for mass communications and obviously the radio and now a podcast.

Izzy: Well, let’s fast forward a couple of years. Now you’re the Dean of Students here at UConn. Your office covers a ton of areas. What would you say the main mission of the office is?

Fany: Thank you. So, I always dream about being a Dean of Students and, I was so happy when I was appointed as the interim dean and then being able to become the permanent dean.

I don’t do this work as Dean of Students by myself. I am very blessed to have a wonderful team of, experts by my side at the Dean of Students office. The office really offers a very supportive environment where students can be who they are. We also help them to be connected on campus and we really help them to navigate and learn any type of challenge that there might be facing during their academic year, including the summer. I just wanted to point out that even in the summer, we are always very busy helping the students to navigate their emotional aspect of life, any academic support that they might need, connecting with faculty and staff.

I love that our office motto is “Care is Needed. Success is Possible.” We assist. All of our deans in the office are always so welcoming and happy to really support not only our students, but as well our staff and faculty. I think of the office not only as the airport where we connect, we are the destination, right?

And we connect our students with the different other supports on campus. But I love that. We talked with our students not only about success, but also if they’re failing, that it’s okay. So you came to the right place to be helped, to be cared for, and most importantly, to empower you to make those choices as a young adult.

Mike: So finally, it’s, it’s, we’re living in difficult times in some ways right now. We’re still a COVID world, if you will. Social media, especially with young people, really rules the way people communicate and the way people see themselves. What do you think the biggest challenges that, college students face today, not only here at UConn, but college students in general?

Fany: Mike, that’s a great question. I think that the biggest challenge is that our college students are facing today, and, I’m also very mindful and thoughtful of supporting this generation, right, right, Gen Cs, and I have to tell you, one of the challenges is loneliness believe it or not, many of our students come, I mean, meet with me and my, and my team, and they really feel lonely. Surrounded by people but yet be lonely in this not only in our Storrs campus, but I think across all of our campuses. Loneliness is one of the biggest challenges. How to make friends having these social interactions that it can be overwhelming for many of them. You mentioned it post pandemic.

The pandemic really took many things away from us and I think the ability to be interacted with one another, it’s a very serious concern for our college students nowadays. The other aspect, I will say the other challenge is wellness. And well being really helping them to take care of themselves and not only with their physical health, but certainly mental health continues to be one of I don’t want to say one of the biggest challenge, but it’s really helping our students to understand that they need to take care of their mental health as well.

And another challenge, which is, has been very prevalent for me in my years, Specifically, for the last, I mean, 10 years, college affordability, I get worried that not only our students, but also families, they face, I mean, you know, some financial concerns, and then, I mean, college can be a burden in the life of our students.

So, how to pay for college, those are the many conversations that we’ve been having with our students, not only in the office, but I know many departments across our university.

Mike: It’s amazing you say loneliness because you would think in this day and age of there’s a million ways to communicate. You would think that loneliness wouldn’t be a problem, but it’s almost like we have so many ways to communicate and reach out to each other, that loneliness becomes more of a problem.

Fany: Yes. Actually, it is. I always love when I ask the students and I said, so tell me about what you do over the weekends. And I find it very interesting that the response is, yes, I do. Just watching movies, going to the library, doing my homework. But when I asked him, “Oh, do you watch movies with your friends?”

They said, “No, I watch movies and Netflix with other friends who are not here”. They are everywhere. But yet they still feel that is the lack of sense of belonging, which I think it creates, I mean, this, you know, this loneliness. And how can we empower them to make friends in real life, in real time?

Izzy: Navigating young adulthood is a challenge, especially in college. Yes. And I like how you said earlier how your office is kind of like an airport for a destination to success. So, for someone like a parent who is away from their child for the first time, what advice can you give parents to help be supportive from afar?

Fany: That’s a great question, Izzy. What advice I’m going to give families and parents to support, I mean their students.

So for the families and parents who are going to be listening this podcast, I wanted to tell you, so welcome, welcome to UConn as well,  because it’s not easy to to let your children that had been with you, whether it was for 16, 17 years, 18 years living at home, it’s hard. But I wanted to reassure you that the Dean of Students Office and myself as the Dean of Students, we are here as well to support you.

Something very prevalent in my culture as a Latina, as a Honduran, is that family plays a big role in the education. And I’ve been reading this book. Over the summer, and one of the chapters said, college is a family business. And I really want for our families to feel that, yes, we are here.

It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to feel that you don’t know how to support what else to do. Call us. We’ll be happy to talk to you, to chat, to let you know as much as we can, right? You are entrusting your children, but we here at the University of Connecticut, we’re gonna help them to become young adults.

We’re gonna compromise, but we need your support. Familial capital is extremely important, and you are still part of this experience. But I find it very interesting working with different generations. Our millennials didn’t want for the families to be involved.

But our Gen Zs are the ones saying to us, I would like you to talk to my mom. I would like you to talk to my dad or my siblings or any other paternal figure, because they really want them to be involved in their career, in their college education. So for the families it’s okay.

We do also are going to have two programs during Family Weekend. I hope that they will take advantage to come and talk to us and ask questions. And let us know as well, even if you don’t have questions, you just want to cry. Many families, many parents have cried with us in our office, and it’s okay.

This is a very hard chapter for you as well, as parents.

Mike: So we talked a little bit about in the beginning, so many things that your office covers and that you work with. Literally almost every part of the university. Tell us what your favorite part of the job is.

Fany: Mike, this is not going surprise you because you know, you and I have worked together for so many years now, but I love people.

I love talking. I love getting to know people. What really makes me happy every day is to get to know our students. I love learning their names. I think that sometimes I do skirt them when I remember their names, when I remember fun facts of their life. But I’m very intentional. I think that’s one of my favorite parts, the students.

My second favorite, my team my colleagues not only at the Storrs campus, when I think of UConn, I think about our seven campuses and the great relationships that I have established. So that’s my favorite part and I will say another favorite part is to see our students graduating in their four or five years graduating on their own.

That makes me very happy. I feel that I’m making a difference in their life.

Izzy: Fany, as we keep talking to you, it really seems like you’ve made UConn your home. You are willing to welcome in students, parents, anyone that needs a helping hand. What else about UConn would you say is unique? Well, I

Fany: I have to tell you, it really excites me and I’ve been thinking a lot about this in my time working at UConn.

I love that learning at this university happens inside the classroom, but also outside the classroom. I really love how we are very intentional that what our students are experiencing in the classroom, whether it’s through the research, we also have this complementary. Programs that really helped our students to find their sense of belonging.

There are so many departments that we have, that they do very intentional, the work. And I think that the other piece that I love about our university is that we keep growing more and more. with our demographics. So we do have so many resources. If you are a first generation college student, our second generation college student, if you come from different social identities and backgrounds, it’s very intentional that our students will find who they are.

And that makes me happy because representation really matters. So in addition, I think that I have seen the dedication. And the devotion from our staff and faculty across, I mean, all of our campuses, you know, the more that I talk to people here at UConn, everyone is very happy for the work that they’re doing for, for us to be a better community.

So I have found my sense of belonging at UConn. It took a while but, but here I am, 18 years.

Mike: When we started this podcast, we talked a little bit about your background and it’s fascinating literally an international background, journalism, so many different great universities you’ve been associated with both here in the United States and back home.

How do you take your whole background and use it in your job today?

Fany: That’s a great question. I think that the way that I applied, I mean, all my background and experiences, it’s an opportunity for me to think about my own dreams. So I’m, I’m a dreamer.

I came, like I said, from a family that we care for each other. So my way of thinking is based on the collective. So what is affecting our community? And so, obviously, I love languages. I wish I could speak more languages and that’s the way that I greet, I mean, my team, my offices. I think that it’s important for me to continuously letting others know that I, I speak English.

I’m bilingual, that I speak, I mean, different languages and also my, like I said, my research, every single experience that I have done in my life, in my professional life. Peer mentoring. Why I love peer mentoring so much is because I did have great peer mentors in my past, but also great mentors.

And I want that, I mean, for our students as well. A sense of belonging. I do believe that each and one of us has the right to feel that you belong in that community. So that’s what is part of my, my research and also validating the experiences of our students and meet them to where they are. So I think that for me, everything that I bring to the table you know, sometimes I’m very mindful to ask if if I can give you a hug because as a Latina, that’s my, you know, way to go.

But I know private space is very important, But this way, this is funny, this is who you’re gonna get somebody who will be able to listen to try to find solutions together, but also being able to have those difficult conversations as well when needed.

Izzy: I can tell just from an hour of knowing you how warm of a person you are and so supportive and UConn’s truly lucky to have you and so are all of the students on campus. So as we mentioned earlier, we’re a couple of weeks into the school year. Do you have an advice for students who are struggling? I know you said you’ve been here for 18 years and it took you a while to find your belonging. Any last words for any UConn students? might need a little uplifting right now?

Fany: My dear Huskies, so I, all I wanted to tell you is please come to the Dean of Students Office. But most importantly, I want to empower you to ask questions. It’s okay. Ask for help. If you still don’t know where to start, if you don’t know where to go, just come to the Dean of Students Office. We are in Wilbur Cross. And we will help you to find those connections. And you can also come and meet with me. You can find me at UConn.edu and  follow me on Instagram.

But also you can follow our office at Instagram. And we are here to help you. It’s not easy. This campus, the Storrs campus, is very big and it can be overwhelming. But we will connect you with the right resources. We will connect you with the right people. Just come. Come in and seek help.

Sometimes, I know you like to be in your room and you might feeling it’s September and the weather is changing, but please go and grab the coffee and then come up to Wilbur Cross because we will be ready to help you as much as we can.

Mike: That’s such great advice for students that are starting this semester. And it was great to have you here today, Fany. We really appreciate you stopping by.

Fany: Thank you so much, Mike.

Mike: Our guest today was Dr. Fany DeJesus Hannon. She’s the Dean of Students here at UConn. And we thank you for listening to the UConn 360 podcast and hope you join us again.