Vice Provost for Diversity and Educational Equity, State University of New York. Heads the new Office of Diversity and Educational Equity.

60, Loudonville

Personal: Longstanding relationship with the writer Rosalie Morales-Kearns, who teaches creative writing and literature at the University at Albany. Daughter, Jennifer, 24, a Brooklyn-based artist and illustrator.

Hobbies: Hiking, reading, cooking, walking New York City neighborhoods with his daughter.

Reading: "Supercapitalism," by Robert Reich.

What he does: Oversees educational opportunity programs. Represents SUNY in a national project to develop programs to diversify premier public universities. Oversees and develops programs to increase the numbers of faculty and graduate students from underrepresented groups. How he got there: Born in Puerto Rico; at the age of 3 came to the U.S. with his father, who worked in an electrical switches factory in Brooklyn. Educated in Brooklyn public schools. B.A. in political science at City College, Ph.D. in the same field from Columbia University. Started as an assistant professor at Fordham University in 1978, where he also directed the Puerto Rican Studies program. Went on to Rutgers University and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he directed the Latino Studies program. In 2007, he came back east.

On returning to New York:

"It's hard for a New Yorker to spend that much time in the flatness of the Midwest. And also the lack of real diversity. Diversity existed only in the university."

Why did SUNY create the Office of Diversity and Educational Equity?

"It recognized that it needed to develop a centralized, comprehensive, organized approach toward diversifying our faculty ... I think SUNY looked around and saw that some of our major universities -- public universities -- nationally were going in that direction. Diversity is hot in a way."

"There was a driving political force as well: UUP (United University Professions), legislators were very concerned about the need for SUNY to be more representative of the reality of the state. When we look at the population of the state, about 32-35 percent black and Latino, and we look at the composition of the professoriate and student body of SUNY, there's a big discrepancy." (About 7 percent of faculty in SUNY's research universities and comprehensive colleges are black and Latino.)

Where does SUNY need the most work on diversity?

"I would orient my efforts at this point more toward faculty and graduate students. Grad students because they are the pipeline. That's where we are going to draw our faculty from. But clearly faculty, because they're responsible for so much."

What are some of the challenges of diversifying the faculty?

"There are many. We can start with the most obvious: resources. The number of PhDs from historically underrepresented populations is very low ... and the universities who are committed to diversity realize those are the people they have to recruit. So you can imagine the competition is very, very fierce. So that resources are necessary to attract those individuals."

"The other reality is that some universities, or some departments, are more resistant to change than others. So what is critically important is that we have the leadership on these campuses that does appreciate the importance of diversity and will work with this office to make those departments and units more accommodating and receptive to these various initiatives."

What are the goals of your new office?

"Concretely, within five years to try to double the number of black and Latino faculty members in our research universities, to double the number of graduate students in our Ph.D.-granting units. And Native-American, if we could triple and quadruple them that would be great because the numbers are really miniscule. I think in terms of representation of Asian-Americans, we tend to be a little better than the other groups, but there is still underrepresentation."

"Are our schools going to graduate a primarily white leadership and managerial class that is going to preside over an increasingly black, Latino population? That's going to be an important policy issue in the years to come."

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