Paige Diggs joined the Mountaineer Football staff in January 2021 as the director of the 5th Quarter program, of which its purpose is to position the student-athletes for off-the-field success in life beyond graduation.
A native of Amarillo, Texas, Diggs comes to West Virginia with experience in higher education, legal affairs and the corporate world. She has three degrees, a bachelor’s degree in mass communication and journalism from Fresno State, a master’s degree in business administration from WVU and her juris doctorate, also from WVU. While a student-athlete at Fresno State, she was a four-year member of the women’s basketball team, serving as a team captain as a senior.
At West Virginia, Diggs will organize and execute the educational programming of the 5th Quarter program’s five pillars for the student-athletes: character development, leadership development, real life, social responsibility and career development. She will oversee the development of content and topics for each pillar, produce individual and team plans and schedule and organize the speaker series. Diggs also will oversee the freshman bridge program to prepare freshmen for the college experience and organize the senior transition bridge program to prepare outgoing seniors to navigate life.
This past year, Diggs served as the strategic initiative specialist for the Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity at Cal State Fullerton. She oversaw and managed the strategic plan for the diversity, inclusion and equity programs for the entire campus and assisted in the implementation of the framework within each division.
She served on campus committees to create and implement changes based on campus climate survey, maintained and assisted in the creation of the faculty of color learning community and was the lead of a three-person team that created the first campus management onboarding programming. She created and assisted in the development of programming and services to increase retention of staff of color and assisted in the coordination of evaluation and assessment efforts of programming provided by the office of diversity, inclusion and equity programs.
Diggs also served as a confidential support agent for the Office of Labor and Employee Relations at Cal State Fullerton, an athletics coordinator for the Office of Enrollment Management at LSU and a compliance intern at West Virginia. She was a graduate research assistant for the WVU College of Law, was a clerk at the Taylor County Court and worked in customer relations and support for Aetna, Experian and Enterprise.
Diggs served on various committees at her stops and has a list of higher education trainings, facilitations and panel discussions in which she participated, detailing a variety of multicultural, diversity, human resources, equality and inclusion forums and issues.
