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Gillian Lord always longed for a career rooted in helping others, and her expectations have been surpassed over the course of two decades of work in higher education. Long tuned in to the pulse of the student body, she’s now ready for a new opportunity to shape the overall student experience at the University of Florida.

Recently appointed associate dean for student affairs and director of the Academic Advising Center, Lord is poised to develop leading initiatives that span admissions, experiential learning, advising and career connections.

She comes to the role following 11 years as chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, where Lord guided colleagues to re-imagine the curriculum, reaching a new level of excellence in teaching, research and service. She’s taught Spanish language at all levels in her role as professor of Spanish and linguistics. Lord also directed the lower division Spanish program, working to improve the language requirement experience for undergraduates.

Lord’s investment in student success stems from personal experience. “When I was younger, I had no idea what I wanted to study or do with my life, and it’s only through a series of lucky decisions and faculty who took an interest in helping me that I discovered the path that led me to where I am today,” she said. In her new position, Lord hopes to spearhead efforts to ensure all students have an opportunity to find their way.

It won’t be a steep learning curve for Lord: For many years, she has welcomed students to campus as a Preview advisor, sent them off as a commencement coordinator, and worked closely with hundreds as a mentor at all stages in between.

Lord’s predecessor Joseph Spillane is confident that she’ll thrive in the role. “Every step of the way in her career here, she’s put undergraduates front and center,” he said. “This is her opportunity to take what she’s done and then enlarge it on the college level.”

Lord looks forward to supporting and building upon Spillane’s initiatives, while establishing her own priorities. “Rather than fill his shoes, I’m looking at it as adding my own pair next to his,” she said. “Heels, maybe, since I’ll be the first woman in this position — although now that I think about it, perhaps a pair of sensible flats would be better.”

As director of the Academic Advising Center, Lord will lead efforts to evaluate and enrich its services to students — while also tackling the tough challenges advisors face today, such as higher than average student-to-advisor ratios and mounting student mental health concerns. “Frequently the advisors are the only constant in the students’ first few years, so they are the ones that know each student’s story,” she said. “They become sounding boards, counselors, support systems, and so much more.” Lord is confident that the advising center’s team of faculty and staff are up to these constantly evolving challenges.

As Lord and her team walk students through each phase of their journey, she wants to celebrate each student’s individual perspective. “They have their own stories, their own backgrounds, values, and experiences, so we really can’t assume a one-size-fits-all approach – to education, or to advising,” she said.

“The more we can connect and find common interests and goals across disciplines and departments, the stronger the community will grow.”

With roughly a quarter of the incoming undergraduate class at the University of Florida identifying as Hispanic or Latinx, Lord’s background in second-language acquisition will be essential to her new role. Over the past few years, she has explored ways to make campus information more readily accessible in multiple languages.

We are going to be a multilingual campus, so it becomes a question of how well prepared we are for that population,” she said. What’s more, Lord said, a focus on language-learning builds a richer worldview by exposing students to different perspectives and cultures, pushing them beyond comfort zones and teaching them that mistakes are important for growth.

Beyond120, the college’s signature professional development and experiential learning program, is also set to flourish under Lord’s new leadership. “It is very much in line with everything I believe as an educator – in fact, the very nature of language teaching, in particular, emphasizes the key things that are the foundation of Beyond120: experiential learning, real-world applications, opportunities beyond the classroom, cross-disciplinarity,” she said.

Lord earned her PhD in Spanish Applied Linguistics from Penn State in 2001. She moved to Gainesville shortly upon graduation, accepting a position in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, where she served as Chair for the past 11 years. Her research focuses on second language acquisition.

Lord’s previous positions at the university allowed her to develop a deep knowledge base of the college’s landscape and fine-tune her leadership style over time. While the college’s more than 30 departments and centers may seem disparate, it’s this range of disciplines that makes CLAS so special.

“The more we can connect and find common interests and goals across disciplines and departments, the stronger the community will grow,” she said. “The truth is that we need arts and sciences to solve the big problems of the world today — social justice, the environment, national security, international relations, whatever the topic — and CLAS gives our students a wide range of tools with which to approach them.”