Students
Students
JWU Bridge: Resources and Community聽
Author Miranda Hasani '25 is a Sports, Entertainment, Event - Management major and works as a student assistant at JWU, contributing to JWU News.
Students at Johnson & Wales have access to a variety of support services on campus to help with academic performance, mental health, physical well-being and social topics. There are many safe spaces for students to express themselves, but one of the best places is the Bridge for Diversity, Equity & Social Justice, also referred to as the Bridge. The Bridge is a hub for students to connect and access resources, programming and training that advances a culture of inclusion, safety and belonging at JWU.
In person or online, students can visit the Bridge to learn more about important social topics such as ethnicity and culture, sexual and gender identity, racial justice, safe sex practices, relationship violence and more. This space on campus also upholds values of Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity (DEI) measures and aims to spread these values through campus.
The History of the Bridge
Before the Bridge came to be, it was the Multicultural Center, then the Intercultural Center, under Student Affairs. Next was JWU Global, which aimed to provide opportunities for all students to connect across different cultures and provide dedicated support to our international students and language learners.
In the summer of 2020, the space was repurposed to focus efforts on social justice issues. “Since 2020, the work of the Bridge has really expanded beyond the four walls of the physical space that we occupy in the Xavier complex, to really work to create and strengthen a culture of inclusion and belonging across Johnson & Wales,” says Bridge Director of Inclusion & Belonging Michael Waugh. “Before 2020, it was really just a Providence-specific entity but since then, the work has been elevated to impact all areas of the university.” The Bridge aims to do this and more.
Waugh’s role as director is to provide leadership in advancing a culture of inclusion and belonging among our students, faculty and staff university wide for the Providence Campus, the Charlotte Campus and the College of Professional Studies our online college.
“We anticipate what our students will need and what support we can provide,” says Waugh. “A lot of this is reactive to what's happening in our community and in the world, so things like elections or political events, natural disasters, global conflicts — seeing what what's going on in the world and how that's impacting our community, and then making sure we have communication and support available for students.”
Waugh takes on many different tasks such as one-on-one support for students to help with things like identity development or challenging situations that might arise, such as bias, harassment, discrimination, sexual assault and relationship violence. He also supports student clubs and organizations with programming on campus and provides professional development opportunities for faculty and staff on how to advance JWU’s culture of inclusion and belonging. Waugh also chairs several DEI-related committees across the university and oversees online resources. Beyond this, he pointed out the great amount of behind-the-scenes work that goes into the strategic planning, assessment and policy advocacy which informs the kind of work the Bridge does.
Student Assistants Make a Difference: Taytum Camacho '26 and Denise Meyer '26
At the Providence Campus, the Bridge has a physical location that is maintained by students. Denise Meyer ’26 and Taytum Camacho ’26 manage the day-to-day operations at the Bridge as well as the work-study students who also work in the space. Both Denise and Taytum are part of the Psychology program and often use what they’ve learned in the classroom to help students who come into the Bridge.
Denise works very closely with Waugh to help provide clubs, organizations and the university at large with many DEI resources. She helps provide students who come forward with Title IX cases a space to voice their concerns and redirects them to Waugh to guide them through cases of sexual harassment and assault. She also ensures that the Bridge provides gender-affirming resources including pamphlets with information, offers safe-sex supplies such as condoms and dental dams, and offers menstrual products that are accessible to grab and go.
Denise also leads the Instagram and other social media networking for events. “On JWULink for example, there's a section for observing meaningful dates including holidays and important observances, and we do all of the posts to that,” said Denise. “I also do a lot of event planning here at the Bridge including DEI programming.”
Recently, she helped with planning for Native American Heritage Month and soon will be starting to plan for Black History Month. “We just think that people at Johnson & Wales should have a space to feel like they can come as they are and have their identity represented, and that's really our biggest goal, to spread that sentiment around campus,” said Denise.
Majoring in Psychology has helped Denise fulfill her role at the Bridge in many ways. “As a Psychology major, I’d say that we are typically compassionate, empathetic and caring people,” she said. “I feel like you can't be in the position to convey DEI values and not feel compassion and empathy for other people in other communities. I feel like they go hand in hand. In a lot of the work that I do, I feel for a lot of people, and I care about people. I think that helps when it comes to spreading awareness on certain issues.”
As she is now a third-year student, she gets to look back on three years of working with the Bridge and how it has served as a safe space for other students as well as herself. “I really do love everything about my job. I really enjoy that I can be myself and represent who I am without shame. I started here as a work-study, and when I did, some of my coworkers and I decided to put up an ofrenda (an offering placed for an annual celebration of Día de Los Muertos — a holiday that honors deceased family and friends) to celebrate our culture. Now, I can say we're in our third year doing it, and it's really spread to a lot of our JWU community, especially those from California and Texas. They see the ofrenda and feel like they're at home again. It's an annual thing and people come up and put their pictures up which I think is really cool and captures how this serves as a space for people of different cultures and belonging.”
Taytum is a student assistant for both Student Engagement and the Bridge. Her responsibilities include managing the event space for Student Engagement events, staffing the front desk, scheduling and managing the team of 12 work-study students that help tend to the space, and assessing what the Bridge needs to be doing for the week such as planning and executing events.
This year, Taytum also gets to be a primary source for the Artful Afternoon events that happen three times a week. Two of those are drop-in times each week, so this includes making sure that the space is set up for those events and that students have access to materials to enjoy time between classes to decompress and partake in different crafts.
Taytum also shared that the Bridge provides joint counseling. “If students need to vent or express their desires for certain programs that we may be lacking, they can come in and express those concerns to Michael Waugh during the joint counseling sessions,” she said.
She feels the atmosphere created by her and the other employees of the Bridge facilitates a space on campus that allows students to exist as they are. “We hold space for students, which I think is different from other spaces on campus, where there's not necessarily a need or a resource that students are coming in for. Rather, they're just coming in for the general vibe of the space,” she said. “I think that sets us apart from different areas on campus. Our goal is to be an inclusive space on campus and to spread inclusivity to the rest of campus.”
There is a lot of effort that goes into planning and curating the events at the Bridge. “We curate cultural events that are happening, or spotlight awareness months or awareness days," Taytum said. There's a lot of necessary attention given to the different communities that our students belong to.”
What she’s learned as a Psychology major has allowed her to bring more to her role as a student assistant. One of the core lessons taught through the program is to have empathy and to not judge. “I think judgment is one of the biggest detriments to being a human being - having your own preconceived notions, bias or ideas and letting them stop you from making connections with other human beings is terrible. I think that learning to leave those judgments at the door can really help you further connections with other individuals, especially when it comes to spreading diversity, equity and inclusion. You don't know where anyone's coming from or what their background is.” The education Taytum has gained through her program has allowed her to embrace these ideals and make the space where she works a better one.
“I work with a team of people that I genuinely like to be with and hang out with, and I think we work really cohesively together," Taytum added. "It's not all fun and games — we can get work done when it's necessary, but keeping a high-energy, fun and positive environment always makes it easier to come into work. It always makes dealing with harder issues just a little bit easier.”
Where Can You Find JWU Bridge?
At the Providence Campus, the Bridge's physical location is in the Xavier Academic Complex, next to the Xavier Residential Hall. Students can visit:
- Monday from 10am-12pm and 1-8pm
- Tuesday from 10am-8pm
- Wednesday 10am-6pm
- Thursday 10am-8pm
- Friday 10am-4pm
- Closed on the weekends
Students from Charlotte and Providence can also find all Bridge resources on .
The Future of the Bridge
Waugh highlights what the work of the Bridge will entail for the next few years. “We just launched the next phase of our strategic plan. We've worked to thoughtfully integrate diversity, equity and inclusion throughout the next phase of the university strategic plan so that it touches everything that we do. The goal of the Bridge is to create physical and online space for students to feel safe, seen, supported — especially students who hold identities that have been traditionally underrepresented in higher education and the university.”
He hopes that more and more students can use the space and the support and resources that the Bridge provides to foster a culture of inclusion and belonging.
