Nita Phillips Dixon Recreation Center
Hayden Murphy Student | College of Liberal Arts
Exposure and enrichment
Dixon Recreation Center hires about 300 students every year. And one of the first connections they make is with Nita Phillips.
Hayden Murphy met Phillips shortly after beginning her job at Dixon during her sophomore year. “When anybody had questions like ‘where do I find this?’ or ‘what do I do about that,’ Nita had the answers,” she says.
Phillips and Murphy were later officially paired in a mentoring program between administrative and student staff at RecSports. Phillips says part of mentoring was simply exposing students to new experiences, both in their day-to-day work and on bigger issues like diversity and integrity.
For Phillips, mentoring has given back much more than what she’s put in. “It’s such an enriching process to be a part of these students’ lives,” she says.
