Director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Center Nino Testa (G ’13) will be leaving Tufts on Dec. 16, after having served in the role for the past two and a half years.
According to Testa, Dean of Student Affairs Mary Pat McMahon will hire an interim director for the spring while a nationwide search for a new director is conducted.
Testa said that when he first assumed his position, not many students were actively involved with the center.
“I really wanted in my first year here, in particular, to set a tone that [let] students feel like this was their space,” Testa said.
As director, Testa has redesigned many programs to tailor them to students' needs. Noting that standards from the 1990s no longer provide what the community requires now, Testa said that he revamped trainings and workshops to make them more applicable to today's needs.
"Maybe the needs of the community aren’t as they were before I got here, [with] panels of students sharing their coming out stories," he said.
However, according to Testa, his efforts and initiatives expanded beyond the LGBT Center, as he worked to inform all members of the Tufts community.
“I found when I got here that people really needed help thinking through how to address people on a basic level — pronouns, names, understanding not just gender identity and expression as concepts,” Testa said.
Brimhall-Vargas explained that Testa has not limited his efforts to helping students in the Schools of Arts, Sciences and Engineering but has expanded his reach to the wider Tufts community, including at the Boston and Grafton campuses.
“Even though that’s technically outside the scope of his responsibility, he provided that discretionary effort to make sure that the LGBTQ community here at Tufts was as well-supported as possible,” Brimhall-Vargas said.
According to a 2014 Daily article, Testa explained that he wanted to help make Tufts a place where students feel comfortable and supported in exploring all facets of their identities.
“People come to the center with all of [these] different needs and experiences; there isn’t just one reason you want to go to the LGBT Center, and I want it to be a place that’s mindful of all the intersectional identities at Tufts,” he told the Daily in the article.
Chief Diversity Officer Mark Brimhall-Vargas said Testa had achieved this goal.
“[Testa] is very good at thinking about the ways that his work can intersect with other dimensions of difference in identity,” Brimhall-Vargas said. “He has a keen understanding that LGBTQ identity does not exist by itself, that it exists with other identities, and he has to be attentive to that.”
Testa’s coworkers, including graduate assistant Nick Whitney (LA ’16), were grateful for the work Testa had done as director.
“He puts students’ concerns and students’ voices at the center of everything he does,” Whitney said. “To have a director like that is truly a blessing.”
Parker Breza, Tufts Community Union Senate LGBT community representative, said Testa is supportive, caring and receptive to students.
“He is extremely willing to help you make things work, so he really listens to student ideas and really wants students to succeed in whatever they’re trying to do,” Breza, a sophomore, said.
Testa explained that as director of the LGBT Center, he has been involved in many programs and initiatives including workshops, discussion groups for people questioning their identities and Team Q, a peer leader program designed to connect first-years with mentors.
Other ongoing projects in which Testa is involved include the Trans Support Task Force, a committee to create a more inclusive environment for people in trans communities, and an initiative to include a more comprehensive question about gender identity on the Tufts undergraduate application, Brimhall-Vargas said.
Breza explained that the gender identity question was designed to make the application process more inclusive.
"Last year, Nino and I worked with people from Admissions and a bunch of other offices, including Mark Brimhall-Vargas, and we basically came up with what I think is a better way to ask about gender — not just asking if someone’s male or female, but actually asking if folks are trans, if they’re genderqueer, in addition to asking male or female," he said.
Testa said that he enjoyed his job because it never felt stagnant.
“I thought that that would be a fun and dynamic work environment, and it has actually proven to be the case,” Testa said.
Looking to the future, Testa said he has no concrete plans for his next occupation. He intends to move to Dallas, Texas with his partner and will search for a job there.
Testa said he is open to working with students at a new institution, but he may also enter a different industry.
“I’m not professionalized enough of a person to worry too much about next steps in terms of career,” Testa said. “I’m excited to try some things out and see what feels good.”
As for Tufts' future, Testa hopes it will feature more conversations and strategic plans to make student services more gender affirming.
“I would like to see a more intentional, concerted effort amongst all parties of the university to come together to talk about what it actually means for this to be an equitable university around gender and sexuality,” Testa said.
