In this paper I reflect on a collection of essays by an array of teacher-scholars across diverse disciplines at UMass Boston published in the book, Achieving Against the Odds: How Academics Become Teachers of Diverse Students (Temple University Press, 2001), edited jointly by Esther Kingston-Mann, professor of history and director of the Center for Improvement of eaching (CIT) at UMass Boston, and Tim Sieber, associate professor of anthropology in the same institution, was kindly extended to me by Louise Z. Smith, Interim Dean of Liberal Arts at UMass Boston, as a welcoming gift for the occasion of my forthcoming appointment in Fall 2003 as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at UMass Boston.