Reggie Solomon ’98 has been a fellow at Ezra Stiles College for 22 years and finds this extracurricular work endlessly enriching. It is the college he resided in as a Yale student, and to which he returned when he took a position at the university following graduate school and two years of work in California. Not long after settling back in New Haven, Solomon was asked by the head of Ezra Stiles to serve as a fellow.
Recently, YourYale had the opportunity to speak with Solomon, now a senior associate director of major gifts in the Office of Development and Alumni Affairs, about his experience supporting Yale students as a staff member and alumnus.
What’s it like to be a college fellow?
I think of college fellows as an orbit of encouraging adults that can support the life of the residential college and help the heads of college in their leadership roles. You have fellows who are faculty, postdocs, and people like me who are staff members. The heads of college determine the village that they want surrounding their undergrad students.
What does one do as a college fellow?
There is a social component to being a fellow that enfolds the students, like meeting for lunches and dinner events or attending presentations; sometimes it’s fellowship with the current senior class, all in the name of the mission of the college, so in my case, Ezra Stiles. Fellows can also robe and march in the processional for Commencement.
Additionally, there are first-year advisors, and that is how I serve and have served for decades. At the beginning of each new academic year, the college dean asks us how many first-year students we would like to advise. I usually take three or four, and it has been a very meaningful part of my life.
What do you like the most about being in this role?
It’s great to provide students with perspective outside the Yale bubble and be there for them during their formative first year. I meet with them at the beginning of each semester to talk about their schedules and what they are hoping to get out of the semester. At the second semester point, we look at their grades. I ask how they performed the first semester and if they’re happy with their progress or do they want to change something.
I advised a Ukrainian student when the war was just beginning, and we talked a lot about what she was going through as she was selecting her classes and navigating her first year. It’s great to be that caring adult, sharing my Yale college experience as well as that of other students with similar concerns and how they dealt with them. Being an alum, I love Ezra Stiles, and you get lunch passes every semester to meet and talk with your students, who are by far the highlight of being a fellow.
What are the rewards of being a fellow?
So many. You form relationships with amazing Yale students that often last beyond the initial advising year. Some of my students visit me a couple of times a year just to check in. One who is now a senior connected with me recently, asked if I could meet his parents at graduation, and reminded me of a conversation we had when he was a first-year advisee.
He was trying to decide if he should take time away from Yale to do some campaigning work in Washington, D.C. Ultimately, he decided to stay at Yale, but when he visited me as a senior, he said that the day we had the conversation, he went and sat on the steps of Beinecke and thought about it for a while. He said it was important to him that there was someone at Yale who was able to provide him with perspective. He remembered that I did not tell him what to do — that I asked him questions and let him know what other students in situations like his had done and what their experiences were like.
Positively impacting a student’s journey in some way, shape, or form is the greatest source of joy for me as a college fellow.
