About Cedric
Cedric Harris serves as the Assistant Dean for Student Support and Bias Education and chairs the Bias Response Network. In his role, he provides support for students who experience bias incidents and conducts training and workshops designed to educate the community about bias education. His goal is to facilitate people’s learning regarding biases so that they will be better aware of their own biases and how they express them toward others.
Before moving into this role, Cedric served twenty-four years working in various roles for Residential Programs and Services (RPS), most recently as Associate Director for Training and Logistics. During his time at RPS, a significant contribution he made was creating a dynamic and engaging experience for residents who lived at Teter Quad from 2000-2011. It was at Teter that he coined the motto, “Teter is tight,” and introduced the FISH Philosophy principles: play, be there, make their day, and choose your attitude. Both of these efforts transformed the working experience for residential staff members, which in turn transformed the living experience for residents during this time and several years afterward.
For more than twenty years, Cedric has served on the Racial Incidents Team with a group of caring and dedicated professionals who worked tirelessly to support students who experienced racial incidents on and off-campus. Supporting underrepresented students has always been a focus of the work he did and continues to do. For over twenty-five years, Cedric served as the co-coordinator of the summer residential component of the Groups Scholars Program. With this responsibility, Cedric worked tirelessly and passionately to make sure the student participants had the best experience that they could. This effort has paid off in many ways as Groups Scholars engage in the campus community, step into leadership positions, and make their presence felt throughout the university.
Cedric is from South Bend, Indiana and received a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California and a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the IU School of Law (now the Maurer School of Law) in Bloomington, Indiana.