UC Santa Cruz has named Catherine A. Carroll, an attorney with deep experience in equity and equal protection work, as its next Associate Vice Chancellor for Equity and Equal Protection (EEP).
Carroll has spent more than a quarter-century working in the civil rights arena, including years in the legal system working to improve its response to gender-based violence, specifically for poor and marginalized women.
“I am thrilled to be joining UC Santa Cruz,” said Carroll, a California native. “I am committed to increasing our capacity in public education to be better — to be inclusive, to treat people with dignity and respect, and to ensure that work done in the name of equity and equal protection matters.”
Carroll currently serves as Director of Equity and Employee Relations at Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, the 10th largest K-12 school district in the country, with more than 190,000 students, 40,000 employees, and 200 schools. Her duties include oversight of the division’s response to Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding, as well as employee discrimination and harassment complaints, and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accommodations.
Previous to the Fairfax County position, Carroll was Title IX Officer and Founding Director of the Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct at the University of Maryland. She earned a law degree from the New College of California School of Law in San Francisco, and a bachelor’s of science from UC Berkeley.
The AVC EEP is a key leadership position at UCSC, providing oversight and coordination of Title IX and Title VI, the federal law that protects people from discrimination based on race, color or national origin. The position heads the Office of Equity and Equal Protection, and oversees Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action laws and policies, as well as ADA compliance. The AVC EEP also leads the primary campus investigative unit for a range of compliance issues. The position reports directly to the chancellor.
Chancellor Cynthia Larive called Carroll a proactive leader whose collaborative approach and wide experience will benefit the campus community. “Catherine is committed to creating an environment that provides equal opportunities for everyone to learn and thrive. Our EEP office is still relatively new, and a leader of Catherine’s caliber will help us strengthen it. I am thrilled she is joining us.”
Associate Chancellor Anna Finn will continue to serve as interim Associate Vice Chancellor for EEP until Carroll’s arrival on Oct. 10. Isabel Dees, UCSC’s inaugural Associate Vice Chancellor for EEP, left the post in March to assume the role of deputy Title IX director at the UC Office of the President.
