Miliagros (Millie) Rivera, Ph.D., is the Director of Faculty Engagement and Well-Being in the Office of Faculty Affairs and Development at Mason. In that position, she leads efforts to implement and strengthen institutional initiatives around Mason’s strategic goal of recruiting and retaining a diverse faculty.
Before joining Mason, Millie was a Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication Science at the University of the Free State (UFS) in South Africa, where she also held the role of Acting Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities. At UFS she successfully diversified her departmental faculty, improved student learning outcomes, and transformed the departmental culture through professional development programs that included a seven-module Self-mastery course, which she offered through UFS’ Center for Teaching and Learning and the Wellness Division of the Human Resources Department. She developed the Self-Mastery course for the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business Executive MBA Program, where she worked as a faculty fellow. Prior to living in South Africa, Millie spent 10.5 years at the National University of Singapore, where she was the founding chair of the Department of Communications and New Media (CNM). In that role, she led the department to being ranked third best in the world (World Rankings by Subject, 2012), also leading her teaching staff to win over 24 faculty (college) and university-wide teaching awards. While at NUS, she ran a four-year mindfulness program that supported over 1,000 students and staff, which earned her the NUS Wellness Ambassador Award. Millie is the co-editor (with Rentia du Plessis) of the 2020 book Pathways Across Cultures: Intercultural Communication in South Africa, where she advocates for the use of mindfulness in intercultural communication encounters.