Dr. Nicha Otero runs her fingers along the spines of well-worn books in the Boreham Library, pausing on a volume she might bring into her classroom next year. These texts, dense with theories on learning and behavior, once defined the scope of her research. But years in the classroom have reshaped her focus. Her expertise still lies in psychology, but her purpose? It’s shifted. Now, she studies something more personal, more urgent—how resilience is built, how students rise, how belief transforms potential into power.

“What happens when we unlock potential in places it’s often overlooked?” Otero asks. It’s the question that drives everything she does at the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith.

Otero came to UAFS in 2011 from the sun-drenched islands of Trinidad and Tobago. At the time, it was a leap into the unknown. “I had no idea where Arkansas was,” she laughs, remembering the moment she pulled out a map to locate her new home. But what started as a career move quickly became something deeper. “I was drawn to the promise of a new career. But this campus gave me so much more—it gave me purpose.”

That purpose is woven into the way she teaches, the way she researches, the way she shows up for students every day. As the head of the psychology department and an associate professor, she sees students walk into her classroom carrying more than just textbooks. They carry doubt. Financial burdens. The weight of being the first in their families to attend college. And yet, she sees something else, too: possibility. A kind of quiet determination that needs only the right conditions to thrive.

Those students now drive her research—examining how stress, environment, and personal history shape a person’s ability to succeed. But they also drive her teaching. “I’m not just teaching academic skills,” she explains in a classroom, carefully bisecting a sheep brain for a camera. “I’m teaching resilience and how to face challenges with integrity and empathy.”

She sees the transformation happen in real time. The student who doubted their ability to handle a rigorous research project, now presenting at a national conference. The one who struggled with imposter syndrome, now leading a campus initiative. The ones who once thought success was for someone else, now realizing it belongs to them, too.

Through research projects, community partnerships, and hands-on experiences, she says, UAFS students are solving real-world problems before they even graduate. And they’re not doing it alone. They have faculty who believe in them, who push them, who refuse to let them shrink from their own potential.

Otero understands that kind of support firsthand. She found it in her own mentors—first at Morgan State University, where she earned her undergraduate degree, and later at the University of South Carolina, where she completed her Ph.D. She credits Dr. Rita Barrett, who once held the very position Otero now holds, with guiding her along the path that led here.

Just as mentors made UAFS feel like her professional home, Fort Smith embraced her family as well. She recalls the moment she knew—at St. Boniface Catholic Church, when a simple inquiry about local schools turned into an impromptu tour, an open door, and an unexpected welcome. That’s the kind of place the River Valley is, she realized—a place where people show up for each other.