NCID-1196
Tabbye Chavous
Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion, Chief Diversity Officer, and Professor of Education and Psychology
University of Michigan
Education/Degree:
1 Community Psychology (University of Virginia)
About
Dr. Tabbye Chavous is the vice provost for equity and inclusion, chief diversity officer, and professor of education and psychology—and previously the director of the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID) at the University of Michigan. A native of Aiken, South Carolina, Dr. Chavous attended the University of Virginia where she received her bachelor’s degree and went on to earn a PhD in Community Psychology. Following her graduate work, Dr. Chavous entered the University of Michigan as an assistant professor and moved up the ranks to professor. Prior to her directorship of NCID, she served as chair of the Combined Program in Education & Psychology (CPEP) and as associate dean of academic programs and initiatives within the Rackham Graduate School at U_M. She is also a co-founder, co-director, and principal investigator in U-M's Center for the Study of Black Youth in Context (CSBYC).
Dr. Chavous' expertise and research activities center around (1) social identity development among Black adolescents and young adults; (2) achievement motivation processes among ethnic minority students, including relations among individuals'racial/ethnic, gender, and academic identities; (3) educational transitions in secondary schooling and higher education; and (4) diversity and multicultural climates in secondary and higher education settings and implications for students' academic, social, and psychological adjustment. In collaboration with a number of her graduate student and postdoctoral mentees, she has published extensively in these areas.
Dr. Chavous’ undergraduate and graduate teaching interests and contributions focus on developmental, psychological, cultural, and organizational processes relevant to education and youth development more broadly. Examples include: adolescent psychology, with a focus on adolescent development in the context of schools, communities, and other societal institutions; community psychology; educational psychology.
Current Work
COLLEGE AND SOCIAL IDENTITIES STUDY (CASIS): Funded by the National Science Foundation, this project examines the experiences of ethnic minority students (Black, Latino/a, Asian/Asian American) at five predominantly White universities. A central focus is on academic identity - or students' cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement in their learning contexts - as necessary for sustained academic motivation, persistence, and success. We examine different forms of racial and gender stigma that ethnic minority students may be particularly likely to experience in predominantly White institutions (token minority status, interpersonal discrimination, hostile racial and gender climates), the ways these experiences may emerge within different disciplinary and social contexts on campus, and the implications of these experiences for students' academic identity development.3-DISTRICT RACIAL SOCIALIZATION STUDY (3-D): This project is the inaugural project of the Center for the Study of Black Youth in Context at the University of Michigan. Funded by NSF, the project focuses on racial socialization processes in family, school, and community contexts among Black adolescents in three demographically diverse school districts. "Socialization" includes the explicit and implicit messages that are transmitted to and received by youth about the importance and meanings associated with their racial group. We utilize multiple methods (longitudinal survey, daily diary, qualitative interview and ethnographic approaches) to examine the socialization messages that youth receive about being Black, ways these messages may align or conflict across school, family, and community settings, and implications for youths' identity development, academic achievement, socio-emotional competence, and well-being outcomes.
Research Area Keyword(s)
class, diversity, ethnicity, identity, race