In Review

An educational administrator who has earned recognition for her leadership on issues of diversity and improving the campus climate at several leading universities has been named Rochester’s first vice president for equity and inclusion.

Mercedes Ramírez Fernández, most recently the associate vice provost for strategic affairs and diversity at Virginia Tech, formally began her new role on July 1. She oversees Rochester’s new Office of Equity and Inclusion. There, she holds the title of Richard Feldman Vice President for Equity and Inclusion, a position named in recognition of Richard Feldman, who served as president from 2018 to 2019 and made improving Rochester’s campus culture a priority during his time in office.

As vice president, Ramírez Fernández will work closely with deans and other senior leaders and campus constituencies to create, implement, and lead an institution-wide diversity strategic plan that includes recruitment, training, communication, policy, and metrics. Working with campus diversity leaders, she’s charged with integrating the strategy with federally mandated antidiscrimination compliance and also with identifying and pursuing opportunities to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment, including promoting the University’s vision, values, and culture of respect. Reporting to the University president, the vice president for equity and inclusion is the chief diversity officer for the institution.

At Virginia Tech, Ramírez Fernández was responsible for creating and sustaining programs to increase faculty, staff, and student diversity; ensuring a welcoming, affirming, safe, and accessible campus climate; preparing students for service through an understanding of issues of identity and the human condition; and developing and supporting innovative inclusiveness programs and policies across Virginia Tech’s campuses. Ramírez Fernández’s expertise is in diversity in higher education curriculum, institutional models that support student success, strategic enrollment management, alumni relations, and assessment.

Before Virginia Tech, she was interim assistant chancellor and assistant provost for student diversity at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There, she directed the Illinois Promise Program, supporting first-generation and low- income student success. She also has served as assistant dean of admissions and director of student advising and learning communities in its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and as vice chair of the chancellor’s and provost’s committee on race and diversity, helping advance a successful proposal to have all students take a course focusing on the lived experiences of US minorities.

Prior to her roles at Illinois, she directed living-learning communities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Feldman served as chair of the committee that conducted the search, a process that included members of the University’s Board of Trustees and Rochester’s new president, Sarah C. Mangelsdorf.

Ramírez Fernández holds an EdD in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in counseling from the University of Iowa, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Puerto Rico–Mayaguez.