Correction appended
Evelynn Ellis, former director of equal opportunity and affirmative action, has been appointed the vice president for institutional diversity and equity, Provost Carol Folt announced in a campus-wide e-mail on Wednesday. In her new role, Ellis will be responsible for promoting diversity among College faculty and staff, Ellis said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Ellis has worked for the College since 2008 and currently sits on the reader board of the Higher Education in Review. She is a classically-trained clarinetist who occasionally performs at the College.
Ellis said her top priorities for herself in her new role, which she assumed earlier this month, are recruiting faculty and staff from more diverse backgrounds and building coalitions across campus to support the recruitment and retention of new members of the Dartmouth community.
Ellis said she hopes to generate a "critical mass" of diverse faculty and staff to whom students from shared backgrounds can relate. "We have this incredible diversity of students, thanks to a lot of hard work," Ellis said. "I'm not suggesting that we need to match that, but we want to create a faculty population and a staff population that reflects the diversity of that student population."
The diversity of Dartmouth's faculty and staff will likely not reach the same level of diversity as the student body, which has a non-white population of 40 percent, according to Ellis.
"When we say to students, You can do well regardless of where you came from, the color of your skin, your sexual orientation, your ability or disability, your vet status,' we should be able to show them that," Ellis said.
Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Maria Laskaris, who has worked with Ellis on initiatives to improve the diversity of the Dartmouth community, said she was happy with Ellis' appointment.
"I think she is incredibly intelligent and thoughtful and she has a very powerful presence," Laskaris said. "She has been extremely helpful in providing perspectives and expertise and knowledge with questions regarding the diversity of the student community."
Ellis, who currently serves on the 10-person search committee for the permanent dean of the College, will continue to ensure the diversity of candidates being considered for high-level College appointments in her work with the IDE, she said.
"We do work with search committees to help them broaden the applicant pool right from the start so when they start to make selections, they have more people to choose from," Ellis said. "That's not more work, it's a different kind of work. It's reaching out to people that you didn't reach out to the last time you did a search."
In her new role, Ellis will also work with the Office of Pluralism and Leadership.
"The primary responsibilities are to faculty, staff and the public, and we interact with students in addition to that," Ellis said. "OPAL is a wonderful vehicle for us to stay directly involved with students' lives so we know what the issues are and how we can be helpful."
Ellis said her experience as director of equal opportunity and affirmative action will aid her in her new position, since her previous role allowed her to "see [the issues] up close."
Ellis said the 23 years she spent working on equity and diversity issues at Pennsylvania State University prepared her for her time at Dartmouth.
"I believe that I worked with every kind of person that breathes while at [Penn State]," Ellis said.
Ellis said one of the most meaningful learning experiences she had while at Penn State was participating in an administrative fellowship that taught her the importance of understanding an institution as a whole and why its various offices make certain decisions.
"In working with the graduate school, which was very decentralized, it was critical that I could work with not only graduate students but also administrators on every level, foundations, outside organizations and colleagues from across the country," Ellis said. "I found it delightful work, but I also found it the perfect training ground for understanding diversity."
Although Penn State sometimes seemed too large an institution for enacting meaningful change, Dartmouth's size is "perfect," Ellis said.
"To make a change at a place the size of Dartmouth, even with all of its personalities, it is easier because it is containable," Ellis said. "I can reach my colleagues quickly. To do it at much, much larger institutions is much more difficult."
Ellis replaces Holly Sateia, who retired from the position after 36 years at the College. Sateia will receive the Martin Luther King, Jr. Social Justice Award for Life Achievement on Jan. 28, Folt said in the e-mail.
Ellis received her bachelor's degree from Concordia College. She earned her master's degree in music performance and her doctorate in higher education administration from Penn State.
