Zelda B. Harris

About

Department/School/Division: Loyola University Chicago School of Law

Campus: Water Tower

Years at Loyola: 8 years (since Fall 2012)

What is your favorite thing about working at Loyola? The collective commitment of students, faculty, staff and administration to ensure that Loyola fully realizes its mission to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice and faith. There is a strong sense of advocacy at Loyola which is vitally important to keeping all of us on task of our shared commitments to social and racial justice.

What is your most memorable achievement as a Loyola employee? In 2018, as a result of student advocacy, I worked in collaboration with faculty, students, alumni and administration to create the Professional Identity Formation course. The Professional Identity Formation course seeks to advance the mission of the law school by fulfilling two of the main educational goals at Loyola Law: advancing the Jesuit tradition of social justice and ethics and law; and to prepare students to be accomplished and ethical leaders in the legal profession and the larger community. The required first year law course seeks to assist students in the recognition and elimination of personal bias and building awareness of how diversity and inclusion of others whose world-view is different from one’s own is critical to professional development and success in the practice of law.

What does Loyola's mission mean to you? We recently approved an update to our mission at the School of Law to more accurately reflect our efforts to address he current and enduring challenges of systemic racism in our country. Specifically, we agreed to educate students to be responsible and compassionate lawyers, judges, and law-related leaders in an increasingly diverse and interdependent world; to prepare graduates who will be ethical advocates for justice and equity, who will lead efforts to dismantle the legal, economic, political, and social structures that generate and sustain racism and all forms of oppression, and who will advance a rule of law that promotes social justice; and to contribute to a deeper understanding of law, legal institutions, and systems of oppression through a commitment to transformation, intersectionality, and anti-subordination in our teaching, research, scholarship, and public service.

What motivates you to succeed each and every day? The dedication and commitment of my colleagues to ensure the success of our students as future leaders and change agents in furtherance or our mission. We are facing challenges at every level of society that is reflected at the micro level within the school. I am motivated to do more every day to help our community at the law school live true to its mission.

Tell us how you show your Rambler pride. When the athletic season can resume safely, I look forward to returning to Gentile Arena to cheer on the Rambler’s Men’s Basketball team with my husband and two sons.

Tell us something most people at Loyola would be surprised to know about you. I grew up on the east coast just outside of Boston and enjoy the beauty of the change of season in that part of the country in particular. Little known fact, I was a founding member of the Women’s Crew team at Syracuse University in the 80’s.