UCM’s Board of Directors recently conducted a search for our next director. We had a great response and interviewed several qualified candidates. We are pleased to introduce Mickey Hart as UCM’s new director. 

We were seeking a director to assist in our transition, to coordinate our Re-Envision UCM strategic planning process, to better bridge our spiritual growth and social justice missions, to expand our fund-sourcing efforts, to revitalize our internship program, to enhance our policies and procedures, to expand our website, to revamp our branding and communications, to grow our educational resources, to curate our history, and to develop future programs. We are confident Mickey has the foundation to do these things and more for UCM.  

Mickey is enterprising, thoughtful, and creative, which will be strong assets in evaluating how and what UCM offers to the community in the future. We look forward to how this will transform our building, programming, outreach, and fundraising. Mickey also has well-developed skills supervising others and serving as team leader. 

With a well-established record of compassionate servant leadership, Mickey has competencies working with college students, minority populations, rural communities, and Appalachian people. We are fortunate that Mickey has a strong knowledge of UCM, Athens, Ohio University, and Southeast Ohio communities. 

Mickey has more than 20 years of experience in higher education. He oversaw the growth and development of OU’s LGBT Center for 11 years. He elevated a ten hour a week programs coordinator position into a full-time director position and transformed the LGBT Center into a vital campus resource providing a wide range of programs, resources, and services to LGBTQA+ students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members. 

Mickey has also served as a resident director for OU’s Department of Residence Life, the director of Campus Life at Antioch College, and the director of Residence Life and Housing at Columbus College of Art & Design. Additionally, Mickey leads interactive workshops on diversity and leadership related topics to college students and other audiences.

Mickey also brings a wealth of non-profit organization experience. Throughout his years in Athens, he served as a UCM board member for nine years. His service on our executive, personnel, and facilities committees gives him a strong understanding of UCM’s operations, systems, policies, and procedures. 

His non-profit experience extends beyond Athens; Mickey is a founding member of Equality Ohio and served on the board for three years. He helped to oversee the organization from a grass-roots concept to a statewide advocate for LGBTQ+ equality. Mickey capped off his time with both non-profit organizations by serving a term as chair of the board of directors.

Finally, Mickey’s passion for UCM and its mission are well established. The UCM Board of Directors feel fortunate to be able to welcome him back as director. Help us welcome Mickey. He can be reached via email at mickey@ucmathens.org or by phone at 740.593-7301.

Greetings From Mickey

Like countless other OU students, UCM has meant a great deal to me since my undergraduate education. Those early days, as part of the Athens Peace Coalition and Open Doors, were foundational to my education. What I know about community, grassroots organizing, consensus building, spirituality, the common good, archive collecting, and community service is due in large part to UCM. I am honored to serve as UCM director.

 My time away from Athens has been professionally fulfilling, personally rewarding, and educationally insightful, but having lived in Athens most of my life I sure did miss this unique community. I visited often over the past nine years, but it’s just not the same as walking these brick streets and pathways on a daily basis. I am glad to be back.  

I understand that I am joining UCM at a critical reflection period in its history. While there are challenges and thoughtful decisions to make ahead, this campus, community, and region need a place like UCM now more than ever. I will strive daily to enhance the reach and impact of UCM. 

(Sent to UCM email list on 9-22-21) We are writing to provide you updates in response to recent inquiries we’ve had as the academic year got underway. Due to the COVID pandemic, UCM became less active in the community than usual and the building was only open on a limited basis. The rise of the Delta variant continues to restrict us from opening fully, however we continue to offer carry-out versions of our free meal programs: Thursday Supper and Saturday Lunch. Later this semester, we will be hosting mission-driven spiritual growth and social justice discussion programs outside or online. Internally, the Board of Directors has been working on personnel transitions and reaching out to some of you as part of our process of re-envisioning what UCM will look like moving forward. This internal work continues and will be expanding this semester. 

We’ve also had inquiries related to concerns that two former UCM staff members raised about Lacey Rogers’s experiences while she was employed as Assistant Director and Interim Director. Due to legal and human resource policy restrictions, we cannot share specifics or share the Board’s assessment regarding the matter. We understand that this may not be a suitable response to some, however it is our reality at this time. 

Board of Directors, individually and collectively, are committed to further examining systemic racism and associated biases and attitudes in our lives, in society, and at UCM. Our goals in undertaking this work are to make UCM a better employer for all employees and a stronger social justice advocate in the future. Our first step in this thoughtful process of change is to hire a diversity and inclusion consulting group to work with us for the remainder of the academic year and longer if necessary. We anticipate this consultation will involve several trainings, book readings, discussions, assessments, and policy enhancements. We are making inquiries of who will best serve our needs in this role and we will share more details once we secure a consulting group. 

Presently, the Board of Directors is a group of six volunteers, but we hope to increase the size of the board to the past standard of 10-12 members over the next two years. As we grow the board, we will do so with a greater focus on diversity: race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, class, and faith tradition. Our focus is on the betterment of UCM, its mission, and its future. We invite you to be part of this work. If you are interested in being part of a re-envisioning listening session, ecumenical and interfaith discussions, social justice discussions, potential board membership, or volunteer opportunities, email us at connect@ucmathens.org. 

UCM is an old organization with deep community roots and a long history of spiritual growth support and social justice advocacy, yet with an ever-rotating board and staff UCM is simultaneously an organization in a state of constant learning and growth reflective of our society. With a little grace, this upcoming period in UCM’s history will be about learning, un-learning, and re-learning in regard to a host of diversity and inclusion topics—most especially race. We appreciate your patience, involvement, and on-going support.

May 2021

United Campus Ministry continues to provide meals to the community every Thursday Evening from 5:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. and every Saturday afternoon from 1:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m. The meals are currently being packaged “to-go” due to Covid-19 restrictions. However, as policies change federally and locally we will begin to offer outdoor socially distanced seating (weather permitting).

We are looking forward to the return of face-to-face meetings and meals. We will post changes as they occur. Thank you all for your continued support.