Katrina Caldwell, the vice chancellor for diversity and community engagement, is leaving the University of Mississippi to take a position as the vice provost for diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on June 11.

Shawnboda Mead, currently the university’s assistant vice chancellor for diversity, will serve as the interim vice chancellor for diversity and community engagement beginning July 1. Mead has been with the university since 2014, and has eight years of experience working with diversity and inclusion efforts in higher learning, including involvement with the Bias Incident Response Team.

Provost Noel Wilkin announced Caldwell’s resignation on May 22 in a campuswide email. 

“Please join me in telling Dr. Caldwell how much we have appreciated her service to our university and how much she will be missed. We wish her all the best in her new endeavor,” Wilkin said in his announcement.

Caldwell was the university’s first vice chancellor for diversity and community engagement. She joined the university in 2017, and helped the university to secure the Carnegie Foundation’s Classification for Community Engagement classification and developed a strategic diversity framework for the university.

Before her time at the University of Mississippi, Caldwell served as the assistant vice president for diversity and equity at Northern Illinois University. Before that, she served at several other universities, including DePaul University, University of Illinois at Chicago and East-West University.

The university has not yet begun a search for the permanent vice chancellor for diversity. According to the provost’s announcement, the university is “committed to doing a national search” when they can begin the hiring process.