Leah Adinolfi, coordinator for leadership and Greek life in the Center for Student Life and Leadership, is a staff member with a rich past in community service and student involvement.
A Kingsport native, Adinolfi attended Sullivan North High School and then King College for two years. After her years at King College, Adinolfi came to ETSU and earned a bachelor’s degree in Spanish. She went on to get her master’s degree in teaching.
During her graduate years, Adinolfi worked as a graduate assistant for the America Reads program through Volunteer ETSU. This program is an effort to help every child in the community read on grade level through programs such as tutoring.
During this time, Adinolfi also worked with Johnson City’s America’s Promise, a community initiative to ensure that children within the community receive their basic needs. While working with America’s Promise, she did research to gather a database of resources for the children in the community.
To further her community involvement, Adinolfi used her skill in speaking Spanish to begin doing work with other students through the Kellogg Foundation grant given to the university.
Through this program, Adinolfi helped write articles for a bilingual newspaper and worked in a community center in Erwin answering a hotline for Spanish-speaking individuals in need of assistance.
After doing her student teaching on the ETSU campus, Adinolfi heard of a job opportunity in Student Life and Leadership for a Greek advisor. She was offered teaching jobs, but her calling was to work with student involvement on campus.
“I believe in student involvement, and I really enjoy helping students learn life skills rather than grammar skills,” she said.
When Adinolfi was offered the leadership and Greek life position, she said she immediately knew it would be a huge challenge.
“Leadership and Greek life activities on campus were in need of someone to nurture them and help them achieve their true potential,” she said.
During the past year, Adinolfi has risen to the challenge and has already begun meeting many goals she set last year. She said she loves her job because she has developed many personal relationships with students and gets to work with the student leaders on campus.
“My job is fun but also challenging,” she said. “It stretches me to have to deal with so many viewpoints of the world.”
Another aspect of her job that she enjoys is that she gets to remain involved in campus activities. She has taken an active role in planning and coordinating many activities on campus, including the Pan-Hellenic step show.
Adinolfi describes her position as being “an educator on making decisions that will fulfill students’ college experience.”
Her main focus for the years to come is the integration of student organizations on campus, especially in the Greek system.
“IFC, Panhellenic and Pan-Hellenic are often separated, but the integration among the three needs to change,” she said.
Adinolfi said this year’s Homecoming was a major step in the right direction with Sigma Nu fraternity and Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority pairing up to break the traditional racial boundaries.
“How race relations are viewed on this campus is a huge challenge,” she said. “It’s not me feeling sorry for any group, but it’s me trying to ignite an understanding of the Greek life’s common interest and common purposes regardless of gender and race division.”
Adinolfi said she would be working hard in the next year to help people come into the Greek system with a different mindset about the division of race and gender.

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