Please welcome Dr. Elavie Ndura, our new Vice Chancellor for Equity & Inclusion

It is with great pleasure that I announce the appointment of Dr. Elavie Ndura as UW Tacoma’s next Vice Chancellor for Equity & Inclusion. She will join us August 1 working remotely, and September 1 in person.

Dr. Ndura comes to us from Cal Poly Humboldt (formerly Humboldt State University), where she has served as the Associate Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and the Campus Diversity Officer. Prior to that she was the Vice President for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at Gallaudet University, the nation’s leading educational institution serving the Deaf community. She spent 12 years at George Mason University as faculty in education and a presidential fellow for diversity and inclusion.

Dr. Ndura has a Bachelor of Humanities and Social Sciences in English language and literature from the University of Burundi, a Master of Education from the University of Exeter, a Doctor of Education from Northern Arizona University, and a graduate certificate in conflict resolution from George Mason University.

Dr. Ndura brings to us more than 30 years of scholarship, leadership and practice in complex academic settings. Some highlights: at Humboldt, she has led the development of a faculty cluster hire initiative, an institutional anti-racism action plan, and mentoring and coaching of BIPOC faculty. At Gallaudet she led the development of a diversity strategic plan, and engaged thousands of employees, students and alumni in diversity and implicit bias training. Her accomplishments have been recognized with multiple Fulbright fellowships, a Woodrow Wilson Center fellowship, and a peace educator of the year award from the Peace & Justice Studies Association.

Dr. Ndura asked me to share this message with you:

"I welcome, with deep gratitude and anticipation, the opportunity to join Chancellor Lange's leadership team and the UW Tacoma community. I look forward to working with students, staff, faculty, my leadership team colleagues, and community partners to realize demonstrable progress towards the priority goals outlined in the 2022 University of Washington Diversity Blueprint and to intentionally advance the objectives stipulated in the recent UW Tacoma campus climate survey."

We are all indebted to the search committee that brought Dr. Ndura to us: Rachel Endo (Education) and Jimmy McCarty (CEI), co-chairs, and members Andrea Cobb (community), Vincent Da (alumnus), Amanda Figueroa (Student Transitions), Rickey Hall (UW Seattle), Shalini Jain (Milgard School), AnneMarie Ladlad (graduate student), Sharon Laing (NHCL), Exita Lealofi (undergraduate student), Anderson Nascimento (SET), Kelly Tyrell (Student Life) and Tanya Velasquez (SIAS).

And I am deeply grateful for the hard work of Dr. Marian Harris, who has served as our interim Vice Chancellor for the past year.