Archie Ervin, UNC’s associate provost and chief diversity officer, will be leaving to accept a newly created position at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
“It’s like anything else with opportunities that appeal to you that give you a chance to build on things you’ve done and do them differently or perhaps even better,” said Ervin, who will be the inaugural vice president for Institute Diversity.
Ervin, who has served in the post since 2005, will take his new position Jan.1 to lead Georgia Tech’s strategic plan for diversity and sit on the president’s cabinet.
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Bruce Carney said he has already asked someone at UNC to serve as an interim officer next semester in Ervin’s absence, and that he will hear a response from that person by Monday.
“Diversity is much too important an issue to me and the campus than to let it lag,” said Carney, who declined to name the official he asked.
He said UNC plans to begin a national search for someone to replace Ervin, but he wouldn’t comment on the possibility of an internal hire.
Carney said he hopes to have a new hire by the end of the spring semester.
Ervin said the University administration has created a framework for better understanding diversity at all levels of the University.
Ervin is the third upper-level minority administrator to leave UNC in the past two years. Both former Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Bernadette Gray-Little, who left in 2009 to be chancellor of the University of Kansas, and Melissa Exum, who was UNC’s associate vice chancellor for student affairs before becoming Purdue University’s vice president for student affairs this year, were black.