A UGA search committee has recommended four finalists for the position of associate provost for institutional diversity.
They are Michele deCoteau, director of the Multicultural Engineering Program with the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley; Cheryl Dozier, assistant vice president for academic affairs for University of Georgia programs offered in Gwinnett; Rosemary Kilkenny, special assistant to the president for affirmative action programs at Georgetown University; and Susan Rankin, senior diversity planning analyst with the Office of the Vice Provost for Educational Equity at Pennsylvania State University.
“The search committee was very pleased with the applicant pool, and we believe we have a strong group of finalists,” says Maurice Daniels, dean of the School of Social Work, who headed the committee.
The finalists will visit campus this month. Open meetings with the candidates are scheduled for UGA faculty, staff and students. The dates scheduled are: March 9, deCoteau; March 20, Rankin; March 22, Kilkenny; and March 24, Dozier. Each candidate will meet with faculty from 10:30-11:30 a.m., with staff from 2-3 p.m. and with students from 3:15-4:15 p.m. All sessions will be held in the Gallery of the Tate Student Center.
While on campus, the finalists also will meet in private sessions with Provost Arnett C. Mace Jr. and other UGA administrators, representatives of various constituency groups and Office of Institutional Diversity staff.
The Office of Institutional Diversity, located in the Holmes-Hunter Academic Building on North Campus, opened in spring 2002. It has been headed on an interim basis since last fall by Art Dunning, vice president for public service and outreach, with day-to-day operations supervised by Matt Winston, assistant to the president.
In addition to working with underrepresented students in the College of Engineering at Berkeley, deCoteau has authored successful proposals for National Science Foundation grants for scholarship and infrastructure funding and serves on the University’s Yield Task Force, charged with increasing enrollment of admitted minority students. She holds a B.S. from Berkeley and earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
Dozier, in addition to her administrative responsibilities with UGA at Gwinnett, is a tenured faculty member in the School of Social Work and an affiliate faculty member with UGA’s African Studies Institute. She has directed UGA’s study-abroad program in Ghana since 2002 and also is a faculty researcher with UGA’s Foot Soldier Project for Civil Rights Studies and Research. Dozier holds a B.A. from Fairleigh Dickinson University, a master’s degree in social work from Atlanta University and a doctorate in social work from Hunter College of the City University of New York.
Kilkenny’s responsibilities at Georgetown have included advising the president and his cabinet on policy directions and strategies to achieve diversity and affirmative action on campus. She also convened a national conference on increasing the presence of black and Hispanic faculty in higher education. A lawyer, she has negotiated settlement agreements following investigations of discrimination complaints. She holds a B.S. and two master’s degrees from Kent State University. Her juris doctorate was earned at Georgetown University Law Center.
In addition to her administrative duties at Penn State, Rankin is an assistant professor in the College of Education. She also serves as a consultant to higher education institutions and non-profit organizations to conduct assessments and facilitate strategic planning. She writes frequently on the campus climate nationally for students who are in the minority due to sexual orientation. She holds a B.S. from Montclair State Teacher’s College and earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in higher education administration from Penn State.
Vitas of each finalist are available online (uga.edu/diversitysearch). The Web site also features a copy of the position job description and a feedback form to allow comments on each candidate. The search committee requests that feedback be submitted on or before March 27.
Daniels says the feedback will be submitted to Mace, who will choose the successful candidate with President Michael F. Adams.
The appointment will become effective pending approval of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia.
