Jan. 13--Melvin L. Oliver, a noted champion of campus racial diversity, will become the sixth president of Pitzer College, marking the first African American to lead one of the five undergraduate Claremont Colleges, officials announced Wednesday.
Oliver, 65, will assume office July 1 at a time of national campus unrest over racial, ethnic and gender equity -- including protests that forced out the dean of students at nearby Claremont McKenna College last year. Pitzer, considered the most liberal of the Claremont colleges, did not experience similar demonstrations, but student activists there have also asked for steps to increase campus diversity.
Oliver, who has tackled racial and economic inequality with both research and practical initiatives during three decades at the University of California and a stint at the Ford Foundation, said he would seek to address those concerns as one of his top priorities.
"I want to deepen the commitment of Pitzer to recruiting, supporting and graduating those students (of color) because I think it's an exceptional education and I want it to be available to as many of them as possible," he said in an interview.
He added that he was mindful of the historic nature of his appointment as first black president of the elite group of liberal arts colleges.
"It's very important for students to be able to see someone like them become the president of one of the five Cs," he said, referring to the five undergraduate Claremont campuses.
Oliver is a Pittsburgh native raised in Cleveland by parents who never advanced beyond ninth grade -- his father was an auto repair worker and his mother cleaned hotels and babysat. But Oliver said he was always urged to go to college and eventually rose to become an award-winning sociology professor, author and research scholar at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara.
"Melvin is a seasoned leader, a thoughtful problem solver and a visionary who is keenly committed to collaboration with an activist's passion for culture and fairness," Pitzer Board of Trustees Chair Shahan Soghikian said in a statement. "In sum, he is a living example of the transformative power of a liberal arts education."
Oliver is currently executive dean of the UC Santa Barbara College of Letters and Science, as well as dean of social sciences and a sociology professor. At UCSB he has helped boost minority graduate student enrollment by 40% since 2004 and led an initiative to prepare minority and first-generation undergraduates for entrance to doctoral programs.
Oliver also taught sociology at UCLA from 1978 to 1996 and was named California Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, among other awards. In 1989, he was the founding co-director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty.
His 1995 book, "Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality," co-authored with Thomas M. Shapiro, was hailed for its exploration of race and equality and won numerous awards, including the Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award from the American Sociological Assn. He was also co-editor of "Prismatic Metropolis: Inequality in Los Angeles," and three other books.
In addition, Oliver served as a vice president at the Ford Foundation, leading a community development program that offered $50 million for home mortgages for 35,000 low-income households, among other efforts. At Ford, he also created a grant program to support communities of color who are often disproportionately affected by environmental degradation and disasters.
He said he hoped to develop more environmental justice initiatives with the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability at Pitzer. The campus was the first in Southern California to divest nearly all fossil fuel stocks in 2014.
Oliver earned his undergraduate degree at William Penn College in Iowa and his masters and doctoral degrees from Washington University in St. Louis.
Selected after a 13-month search process from an initial field of more than 300 candidates, Oliver succeeds Laura Skandera Trombley as president of the 1,000-student liberal arts campus.
Donald Gould, a Pitzer trustee who headed the search committee, said Oliver's expertise in teaching, research, fundraising and administration, along with his deep commitment to social justice, were particularly attractive.
"He's excelled in every one of those areas," Gould said. "The board felt very strongly that Melvin Oliver is an excellent fit."
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UPDATE
3:53 p.m. This article was updated with interviews with Melvin Oliver and Donald Gould, a Pitzer trustee and search committee chair.
This article was first posted at 12:44 p.m.
