Ellington Graves

Ensuring Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is vital for Higher Education (HE) institutions as it fosters a sense of belonging, and provides students with essential social skills for success. But, despite its importance, DEI has encountered substantial challenges in recent years, impeding its ability to positively impact students' personal growth.

For Ellington Graves, interim Senior Associate Vice Provost for Inclusion and Diversity at Virginia Tech, these challenges only reinforce the importance of DEI. Ellington sat down with co-host of The Interview, Max Webber, to discuss how the current political landscape informs his teams’ strategies. 

Ellington's Journey

Max: Let’s start with a brief introduction to yourself and your role…

I’m Ellington Graves, the interim Senior Associate Vice Provost for Inclusion and Diversity at Virginia Tech, which is a very long way of saying that I am acting Chief Diversity Officer while our Chief Diversity Officer is on a fellowship. My previous role was as director of the Africana studies program here, so it’s been a very steep but very rewarding learning curve. 

Max: What drew you to a career in HE?

I went into undergrad as a pre-med biology major with the aim of becoming a doctor, but I enjoyed my sociology classes far more than my biochemistry classes. I came to understand that you can go to med school no matter your chosen major, so I ended up switching to a sociology major. By the time senior year came around, I still hadn’t applied to any med schools, and I realized that my reluctance stemmed from changing aspirations. I was faced with some big questions surrounding what I wanted to do, and what career paths would allow me to use my sociology bachelors. I’d spent some time working in the Multicultural Affairs office during my degree, and had found it very appealing, so I decided to pursue a Master’s degree in sociology with a focus on race and ethnicity. In graduate school, I got a chance to shadow faculty, see the autonomy they had, and to get deeply involved in the discipline, and that’s when I decided that I wanted to get my PhD and become a professor of sociology.

Max: What’s your main focus when creating a sense of belonging and inclusion for students?

To ensure we have a sense of belonging and inclusion on our campus, we have to nurture trust between students and the institution, and get them to buy into the idea that their success matters to staff and faculty in a very substantial way. It’s relatively easy for individual members of faculty and staff to create trusting relationships with students, simply by virtue of the meaningful engagement and interaction they share on a day-to-day basis. However, it’s a lot harder for the institution as a whole to gain that trust because institutional policy and decision-making are driven by other pressures, constraints, and stakeholder expectations. The need for university leadership to balance those pressures with realizing a strong sense of trust among students is very challenging, so that’s where we’re currently placing our focus.  

Max: What’s the biggest challenge for your inclusion and diversity team? 

The current political landscape in America has put DEI work under a lot of scrutiny. But, while that’s made it incredibly hard for those of us in the field to achieve our aims, it’s also provided us with an opportunity to take stock of what we do and how we do it. I’ve learned that it’s vital for us to remain intentional in the way we support our marginalized student populations, and it’s more important than ever to assist those who have not been afforded opportunities historically and are still not afforded equitable opportunities today. At Virginia Tech, we work hard to provide programming that speaks to the needs of those communities, as well as to educate the wider student body about the importance of those measures. We also regularly create dialogue across difference, engage in conversations with students about freedom of expression, and impart valuable skills so that they’ll be able to operate effectively and constructively in diverse work environments. 

Max: How do you engage students with these important messages and initiatives? 

Students have a lot going on with their studies, extracurriculars, and social lives, so finding opportunities for meaningful engagement is quite a challenge. We’ve learned that one of the best times to provide students with baseline knowledge about diversity and inclusion is during our onboarding process. Previously, we would provide new students with video content that outlined our DEI policies, and a short quiz to ensure we’d inspired some surface-level engagement. We’re currently revising that process alongside the Constructive Dialogue Institute, an organization that various public colleges and universities across Virginia work with, so our students can get a deeper understanding of our policies. Our initial aim is to marry baseline inclusion training with our residential wellbeing modules. Hopefully, that revamped training will allow our student leaders to engage incoming students in meaningful conversations about creating inclusive communities. We plan to do the same across the rest of our training modules, while encouraging our faculty members to create opportunities for meaningful dialogue in the classroom. Those changes will take a lot of work in the coming months, but they’ll provide a vital introduction for students arriving at our campus who need to engage in conversations around diversity. 

Max: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received during your career? 

Throughout my time in graduate school, I had four different doctoral advisors. They each ended up finding work at other institutions, but since I had decided I wanted to stay put, I had to find other chairs. One of those advisors coached me to take ownership of my work, and maintain my responsibility for making sure that the next advisor understood my vision. That’s come to be a key component of how I approach my career, and I’m still very intentional about crafting my own narrative, honing my vision, and communicating its importance to others.