Diversity Digest’s New Editor

	Mark S. Giles

Mark S. Giles, PH.D., was named as Director of Programs for AAC&U’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Global Initiatives in February 2004 and is the new editor of Diversity Digest. Mark came to AAC&U from Indiana University, where he was serving as Special Assistant to the Vice President of Student Development and Diversity.

In that capacity, Mark assisted the Hudson and Holland Scholars Programs, which are designed to recruit and retain minority and underrepresented high-achievers. Before that, he served as director of the community and school partnerships program, an early college outreach initiative designed to promote academic excellence and college aspirations among minority and low-income Indiana middle school students.

At Indiana, he also helped to create an online diversity course on the dynamics of race and interracial communications, and was the primary researcher for an award winning historical exhibit on the black experience at Indiana University from 1816 to 2002 (see www.indiana. edu/~oma/AA/entrance.html). Mark has also taught and co-taught courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels in a wide range of subjects: contemporary issues in higher education, enrollment management and underrepresented students, college student activism of the 1960s, community colleges, the black church in America, and black student experience in college.

Mark completed his Ph.D. in educational leadership and policy studies, with a concentration in higher education administration, at Indiana University. His dissertation was on the distinguished African-American theologian Howard Thurman. Mark has worked in higher education for the past ten years. He earned his B.A. in African-American studies at the University of Cincinnati, and his M.S. in college student personnel at Miami University in Ohio.

Mark replaces Heather D. Wathington, who left AAC&U to become senior research officer at the Lumina Foundation.