University of Colorado Boulder Provost Russell L. Moore today named Robert Boswell as CU-Boulder vice chancellor for diversity, equity and community engagement effective Jan. 1, 2012.
"As vice chancellor for diversity, equity and community engagement, Bob Boswell will continue the vital work of establishing diversity as a core value for CU-Boulder," said Moore. "I am charging him with building on his previous work, and that of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement, to engage our faculty, staff and students in these essential aspects of our university environment."
Boswell, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology with a long and distinguished career at CU-Boulder, has occupied the post since July 2010 on an interim basis.
The vice chancellor for diversity, equity and community engagement oversees CU-Boulder's total diversity efforts, including recruitment and retention of students and faculty, campus climate issues and developing best practices to promote diversity within the academic, professional and social environment of the university.
"I am honored by this appointment and am eager to continue ODECE's important mission of making diversity a central part of all we do at CU-Boulder," said Boswell. "I'm grateful for the confidence of the search committee, Provost Moore and Chancellor DiStefano, and I look forward to continue working with the entire CU-Boulder community."
Boswell was a teaching and graduate research assistant while completing his doctorate at CU-Boulder from 1975 to 1981. He was hired as an assistant professor in MCDB in 1986 and promoted to full professor in 1991. While retaining his CU-Boulder faculty appointment, he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator from 1994 to 1999.
Boswell became the principal investigator of the National Institutes of Health Initiative for Maximizing Student Development, or IMSD, in 2003. The IMSD program encourages educational institutions with fully developed research programs to initiate or expand innovative programs to improve the academic and research capabilities of underrepresented students.
Prior to returning to Boulder after graduate school, Boswell was a staff fellow with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina from 1982 to 1986 and a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Postdoctoral Fellow at Indiana University in Bloomington from 1981 to 1982.
Boswell earned a bachelor's degree in biopsychology from Marietta College in Ohio before earning his doctorate in molecular, cellular and developmental biology from CU-Boulder in 1981.
Robert Boswell
