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David T. Carreon Bradley is Smith’s New Vice President for Inclusion, Diversity and Equity

News of Note

David T. Carreon Bradley headshot

Published November 30, 2017

President Kathleen McCartney has appointed David T. Carreon Bradley, chair of the Committee on Inclusion & Equity and associate professor of physics at Vassar College, as Smith’s vice president for inclusion, diversity and equity. Carreon Bradley will begin work at Smith on January 18, 2018.

Carreon Bradley, a first-generation college graduate with extensive experience in diversity and inclusion leadership, will bring a strategic, data-based and results-oriented approach to his work at Smith.

“I could not be more pleased to welcome David Carreon Bradley to the Smith community and to my senior leadership team,” said Smith President Kathleen McCartney. “From my conversations with him, I know we will be great partners. I am confident he will play an important role in advancing our sustained work on inclusion, diversity and equity. David gave a terrific campus presentation, and afterwards, many in the audience commented on how well he seemed to understand Smith.”

In his role at Smith, Carreon Bradley will serve as a member of McCartney’s senior cabinet and will guide the development and administration of all diversity- and equity-related initiatives and programs. Among his responsibilities are programming, curricular initiatives, compliance, complaint investigation, and recruitment and retention of faculty, students and staff.

At Vassar, Carreon Bradley chairs the Committee on Inclusion & Equity, and served on the President’s Diversity Council, where he oversaw campus-wide development of policy and implementation of programming related to diversity, inclusion and equity. Among his initiatives are a revision of the college’s mission statement to focus on diversity and inclusion; the development of social justice as part of  the curriculum; faculty recruitment and retention; and more. The work of this committee was recognized in 2015 with the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s first Cooke Prize for Equity in Education Excellence.

“As a professor and diversity leader at a historically women’s college, and with my background in gender and women’s studies, I am excited to help shape and implement Smith’s vision to become increasingly inclusive and equitable,” Carreon Bradley said.

Carreon Bradley’s academic research focuses on equity and engagement in STEM, physics pedagogy, and acoustics. He is the director of Vassar’s Undergraduate Summer Research Institute and the Diving into Research Program, a recruitment and retention program for underrepresented and underserved students in the sciences. In addition, Carreon Bradley serves on the American Institute of Physics’ Liaison Committee for Underrepresented Minorities.

Carreon Bradley graduated from Grinnell College with a B.A. in physics and in gender and women’s studies and received a Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is a lifetime member of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science and a member of professional organizations including the Acoustical Society of America and the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education.

Founded in 1871, Smith College educates women of promise for lives of distinction and purpose and links the power of the liberal arts to excellence in research and scholarship, developing leaders for society’s challenges. The rigorous academic program—anchored in the sciences, the humanities and the arts—is demanding yet flexible, with more than 1,000 course offerings in more than 50 areas of study. A host of unique study abroad programs, the first engineering program offered at a women’s college, and a growing roster of “concentrations,” which allow students to organize unique combinations of intellectual and practical experiences, are signature offerings of the college. One of the largest women’s liberal arts college in the United States, Smith enrolls 2,600 students from nearly every state and 70 other countries.