In this week’s edition of Meet a Judicial Officer, we sat down to interview Assistant Director of Student Judicial Affairs (SJA) Colette Nuño. Colette Nuño is currently the longest serving SJA officer with over 25 years of experience at UC Davis. As an undergraduate, Colette double majored in psychology and sociology at Chico State and later got her master’s degree in higher education administration at Ohio State University.
As assistant director, Colette has a variety of roles within SJA. Some of her duties include overseeing personnel matters such as hiring and recruiting as well as maintaining the SJA budget. In addition to this, she also conducts her regular meetings with students as part of a normal SJA caseload. Colette’s favorite part about working for SJA is helping out the student community and making sure that the judicial process is a learning experience, and not an adversarial one. Colette often finds that the biggest reason students cheat is to overcome pressure from family expectations. She encourages students who are stressed about grades to work hard and prepare for exams instead of having to risk the consequences of cheating. In Colette’s opinion, her most difficult cases are social misconduct issues, such as roommate conflicts. It is often hard to mediate discussion in these meetings since both parties tend to have different expectations and won’t easily come to an agreement.
Colette loves UC Davis and the wonderful campus climate the administration has spent years building. She enjoys the fact that the staff is very cohesive and supportive of each other and adds that the work environment is very positive and welcoming.
That wraps up this quarter’s edition of Meet a Judicial Officer. See you next week!
