Fraser to Return to Teaching Full-Time After Leading Recruitment and Retention Efforts

Gertrude Fraser headshot

Gertrude Fraser, vice provost for faculty recruitment and retention and associate professor of anthropology at U.Va.

Gertrude Fraser, vice provost for faculty recruitment and retention and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia, will step down from her administrative post at the end of December and return to teaching and research, Executive Vice President and Provost John D. Simon announced today.

“We are extremely grateful for Gertrude’s important contributions in leading the University’s faculty recruitment and retention efforts over the past several years,” Simon said.

The vice provost for faculty recruitment and retention has responsibility for a broad range of faculty-related initiatives, projects and research involving faculty diversity, recruitment and retention, dual careers and promotion and tenure. Fraser has been instrumental in developing programs in these key areas, including a comprehensive search committee tutorial, the “Professors as Writers” program and critical dual-career resources and support.  

She is nationally recognized for her leadership on behalf of women and people of color in academia. She is the author of “African American Midwifery in the South: Dialogues of Birth, Race, and Memory.”

Fraser is the principal investigator on a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE Institutional Transformation program. The purpose of the national program, created more than 10 years ago, is to increase the representation and advancement of women in academic science, technology, engineering and math careers – the so-called “STEM” fields – and more recently in the social and behavioral sciences. Fraser will continue her important work as principal investigator with the NSF Advance grant as special adviser to the provost, Simon said.

Fraser was a Program Officer in higher education at the Ford Foundation from 2000 to 2003, spearheading initiatives on diversity in higher education and interdisciplinary programming in women’s and African American studies. From 1998 to 2000, she was director of the Undergraduate Program in Anthropology and associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Carter G. Woodson Institute of African American and African Studies at U.Va. 

She is mother to Maya, a student at Piedmont Virginia Community College.

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Anthony P. de Bruyn

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