After a year-long national search, Sally Dickson of Stanford University has been named the University's next vice president for institutional equity, President Nan Keohane announced late last week.
Dickson, currently the director of campus relations at Stanford, will take office when vice president Myrna Adams steps down June 30.
At Stanford, Dickson oversees five offices, including the Sexual Harassment Policy Office and the Office for Multicultural Development, which has jurisdiction over compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The Office of Institutional Equity at Duke, created by Keohane in 1995, is responsible for monitoring race- and gender-based harassment, improving workplace culture and ensuring ADA compliance.
"One of the things I am excited about and that attracted me to Duke is the level of commitment to issues of diversity that just seem to be a part of the Duke fabric," said Dickson, who was chosen from a pool of more than 70 applicants.
Dickson emphasized the importance of ensuring that OIE, its mission and its goals are a visible and long-lasting part of University life.
"When we talk about the issue of diversity, it is a continuum. It is not something you can do for one month, one year, two years, three years and say, 'OK, it's done...,'" said the New York City native.
Under Adams, OIE's structure was heavily criticized for being too disjointed, but Dickson acknowledged decentralization as a dilemma inherent in OIE's purpose.
"That is a huge tax on one office...," said Dickson, who earned her law degree at Rutgers University. "You want to make sure we can deliver all the services to this huge community."
Although Dickson has not given thought to any specific changes she will make to OIE, she said she is developing a general vision for the office.
"I'd really like to look at creating a Duke community that not only respects differences but also [one where] people can recognize similarities, things we have in common-trying to bring the health system and campus to feel like part of one universe," she said.
Among its new services and priorities, said Keohane, OIE under Dickson will work to provide more opportunities for minority employees to gain training and responsibility, help managers across Duke to provide sensitive and effective leadership and improve the campus climate for students, faculty and staff.
The type of work Dickson does at Duke will be similar to her responsibilities at Stanford, but she acknowledged that the cultural details of the two schools are distinctly different.
For example, Dickson noted that Duke and Durham's southern culture, combined with Durham's large black population, will be an interesting change from the demographics of California, where "Asian" and "Latino" are the predominant minority classifications.
Adams, who will leave her post at the end of her five-year term, said Dickson's California perspective-and specifically her experience at Stanford-will be valuable to the Duke community.
"Stanford had distinguished itself in the late '80s and has been really excellent in multicultural issues in academics and across the university," Adams said. "She's been in an organization that has really attempted to undertake the study and contemplation of what diversity means in their setting."
Impressed with Duke's commitment to institutional equity, Dickson-who has worked at Stanford since 1989-emphasized the importance of having an office to promote that goal.
"People don't leave their culture... outside of the Duke campus-they bring it with them," she said. "So now you have all the different experiences, different cultures, in one environment."
But even more impressive, Dickson said, is the Duke community itself.
"People [at Duke] are talking about race and differences in a very open and honest way," she said. "I would not be relocating this distance if there wasn't something fabulous about Duke."
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