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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Shirley Collado joins administration as Dean of the College and Chief Diversity Officer

In April 2006, the Human Relations Committee, chaired by Dean of Students Gus Jordan and consisting of staff, faculty and student members, submitted a 44-page report to President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz.  The report set out to examine diversity issues across every facet of the College, from academics to administration to student life, and it strongly recommended, among many things, that Liebowitz appoint a chief diversity officer to the presidential cabinet.

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Shirley Collado came to the College for the first time in January 2007 as its new dean for institutional diversity.  She is the daughter of Dominican immigrants and the first person in her family to attend college, earning an undergraduate degree in human and organizational development and psychology from Vanderbilt University.

At the time of her hiring, she was the executive vice president of the Posse Foundation, an organization that identifies and recruits exceptional high school students from public, urban high schools, organizes them into multicultural teams called “Posses” and helps them attend top colleges and universities nationwide.  Collado herself was actually a member of the Posse Foundation’s original Posse, and was the first Posse Scholar to achieve a doctorate.

At Middlebury, Collado became the Vice President of the Office for Institutional Planning and Diversity, working to infuse diversity-related initiatives and to promote multiculturalism across all aspects of campus life.  She focused on faculty diversity and development, curriculum and assessment and the development of a new academic center at Carr Hall, what would become the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity.

Collado left the College in December 2008 due to pressing family circumstances, moving closer to New York City and becoming vice president for institutional planning and community engagement at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa.  However, a further change in circumstances led to her ability to return to Middlebury, and in February of this year, the College announced her new, expanded role as Dean of the College and Chief Diversity Officer, a title she assumed on July 1.

In this role, Collado will serve as both the College’s chief student affairs officer as well as its leader in diversity-related initiatives.  Collado said she is “excited” about her new dual position and the authority associated with it, seeing it as a way to broadly infuse concrete diversity goals across campus even more actively than she had been during her previous stint on campus, in 2007 and 2008.

“It’s not an add-on position,” she said.  “I’m the dean.  And from that position, we really are getting to these goals.”

Collado is continuing “One Dean’s View,” the blog started by her predecessor, former Dean of the College and current Vice President for Administration Tim Spears.  Her first post, on Tuesday, Sept. 7, was entitled, “I’m Home.”

“By embracing my expanded role,” she wrote, “President Liebowitz and the Board of Trustees have placed diversity at the center of the institution rather than at the margins. This is something we should all be very proud of.”

Collado plans to work closely with Commons deans and heads this year, continuing the administration’s vision of structurally integrating academics and student life on campus.


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