East Carolina University recently announced the hiring of a new administrator. Sallye McKee is ECU’s choice to fill the newly created role of Assistant to the Chancellor for Institutional Diversity.
Currently, McKee is the associate vice provost for urban and educational outreach at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Prior to that, McKee was associate provost for multicultural affairs at the University of Denver. Before then she served as vice provost at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She begins her duties at ECU July 1.
According to ECU, the Assistant to the Chancellor for Institutional Diversity “will play a principal role in crafting and articulating a vision of East Carolina University as a diverse and inclusive institution of higher learning.” More specifically, this administrator “will contribute to the institution’s diversity efforts through honest, open dialogue and collaborative networking with administrative, faculty, staff and student colleagues in the development and evaluation of campus diversity programs, policies, and practices.”
The position pays an annual salary of $145,000.
“Sallye McKee is an outstanding leader who will help us realize the potential of East Carolina,” ECU Chancellor Steve Ballard said. “She will make a difference on our campus, and I am tremendously excited about this appointment.”
The appointment of McKee to this new position comes one year after ECU created its new Office of Institutional Diversity. ECU already had in place such diversity offices as its Office of Intercultural Student Affairs, its Office of Institutional Equity, and its Ledonia Wright Cultural Center.
Despite those existing offices, the 2003 ECU Diversity Task Force Report reported its desire to “facilitate the development of a culturally pluralistic curriculum,” one of the objectives of the Office of Institutional Diversity. That would include the Ethnic Studies minor, which has been an option for students since 1991. (The program’s director, Dr. Gay Wilentz, declined to provide Carolina Journal any information, even the course names, required for the minor.
ECU’s Diversity Task Force Report defined diversity “in a broad context to include the representation, integration and interaction of different races, ethnicities, cultures, national origins, abilities, religions, orientations, intellectual positions and perspectives.” The report makes no mention of intellectual diversity or a diversity of ideas.
In 2003, 60 percent of faculty and staff at ECU and 60 percent of the student body were women. In addition, 21 percent of faculty and staff in 2003 and 22 percent of students in 2004 were ethnic minorities. Only 28 percent of North Carolinians are ethnic minorities.