Aashir Nasim wears many hats, and he’s about to add another one: VCU’s chief diversity officer

The Division for Inclusive Excellence is VCU’s most important asset, according to the department’s newest vice president, Aashir Nasim.

“You have seen the surveys and you’ve heard the anecdotal evidence — the comments from faculty, staff and students that say, ‘what attracted you to VCU?’,” Nasim said. “Almost everyone says it’s the diversity.”

Nasim’s appointment to the division’s vice presidency in early March ended the university’s nationwide search. His passion for inclusivity began when he was a college student himself, diving into social justice with a desire to transform lives.

“I saw psychology as a discipline, as an opportunity to allow me to do that and work with people, collaborate with individuals and communities,” Nasim said.

Nasim studied psychology and biology as an undergraduate student at Augusta University in Georgia and transferred to Howard University to study developmental psychology as a graduate student. He went on to teach psychology at James Madison University before coming to VCU in 2008.

In 2012, Nasim had the opportunity to serve as interim chair of the Department of African American Studies. In this role, he was able to transform the curriculum, increasing the number of students in the program from 12 to more than 100 in a couple years.

He got students involved in more research, internships and community engagement internships. This opportunity launched Nasim into becoming a pioneer for innovative urban problem-solving.

It began with an idea to bring together multiple disciplines to solve problems.

“But you know, everyone thinks their ideas are the best thing until other people start talking about them and I think the way that we see iCubed now is dozens upon dozens of hands that have touched it to shape it into what it is today,” Nasim said.

In 2015, Nasim went to the Office of the Provost as a special assistant to develop the Institute for Inclusion, Inquiry, and Innovation, or iCubed. The institution enables collaboration between VCU and the Richmond community through research programs, ultimately helping develop solutions to urban challenges.

As director, Nasim brings together faculty from different disciplines, working with community partners to develop transdisciplinary teams.

“These teams really focus on particular community challenge and these community challenges could be related to health disparities, it could be related to racial and social injustice issues,” Nasim said. “My goal is really to facilitate the development and success of these teams.”

Along with directing iCubed, Nasim works as the interim senior vice provost for Faculty Affairs, focused on faculty recruitment and retention and is a member of the Massey Cancer Center Research Program where he researches tobacco-related health disparities.

“To really understand the burden of health disparities for vulnerable populations,” Nasim said. “And to really understand the social determinants of health and use that information to develop prevention interventions.”

With these skills, Nasim became an ideal candidate to implement the new Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Action Plan, with an ultimate goal of making VCU a model university for inclusivity.

“Aashir is a respected scholar who is admired around the nation and who brings an important lens of diversity and inclusion to his work and to our university community,” said VCU President Michael Rao to VCU News. “He is a thoughtful and passionate leader who embodies VCU’s mission of tackling difficult problems to serve the public good.”

Nasim said he hopes to shape the discourse for diversity and inclusion using what he’s learned within the psychology and African American Studies Departments and with iCubed.

“We wanted to model that (iCubed) and take it to scale and see if there’s some of the same things we can do at the division level for Inclusive Excellence,” Nasim said.

SaraRose Martin, News Editor