Dear UT community,
I am excited to announce that Dr. Edmund (Ted) Gordon has been appointed Executive Director for Contextualization and Commemoration, a new role that will lead the university’s efforts to reimagine Painter Hall, the East Mall, and campus public history. The Campus Contextualization and Commemoration Initiative represents a commitment to research, document and celebrate members of the UT Austin community who have worked to advance campus-wide equity and inclusivity around the history of the university.
The initiative includes:
- Sweatt v. Painter Commemorative Gallery Space: This reimagined space will serve as the main entrance and will be dedicated to Mr. Heman Sweatt’s courage and leadership in the landmark Supreme Court decision, the decision’s national importance as precedent for the desegregation of graduate and professional schools, and the role of the university in the broader history of racial integration in higher education.
- The Precursors — We Are Texas East Mall Memorial: The university will design and create a commemorative landscape that celebrates The Precursors, the first Black undergraduate students to attend UT Austin. This will serve as the central feature of a larger space dedicated to students, faculty and staff who made important contributions to the history of increasing inclusivity at UT.
- Campus Contextualized Research: A dedicated research team will document work on UT Austin and Austin history, with an emphasis on its racial and gendered processes.
Ted Gordon has served as the inaugural vice provost for diversity since 2017 and is an anthropologist whose work focuses on power and social transformation in the Black diaspora. He also served as the founding chair of the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies.
Ted’s contributions are known to many on campus, but I would like to highlight a few:
- Led efforts to develop the university’s first Strategic Plan for Faculty Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
- Created the Provost’s Early Career Fellows Program, an initiative to strengthen opportunities for postdoctoral students.
- Led efforts to coordinate Actions that promote Community Transformation, which are seed grants to support projects within academic units across campus.
- Coordinated efforts to increase access to institutional data around faculty diversity through dedicated dashboards.
He has been a consistent and reliable advocate for institutional progress around diversity, equity and inclusivity. I look forward to continuing to work with him and supporting his efforts in this new role.
We will soon begin the search for the next vice provost for diversity, and Ted will serve in both roles until a new vice provost is in place. Those details will be shared very soon.
Please join me in thanking Dr. Gordon for his service and congratulating him on his new role.
Sincerely,
Sharon L. Wood
Executive Vice President and Provost