SUNY Old Westbury President Timothy E. Sams recently announced the appointment of Elliott Dawes as the institution’s first Vice President for Institutional Excellence.
As Vice President for Institutional Excellence, Dawes will lead efforts to ensure that the University achieves excellence through adherence to and progression through the goals within the campus’ strategic plan, which is in the final stages of development. While serving as a member of the President's Cabinet, he will also be responsible for leading inclusive excellence efforts and supporting compliance efforts across campus, including legal matters.
“Throughout his career and life, Mr. Dawes has exhibited a continuous pursuit of excellence and a commitment to social justice, diversity, and equity,” said Sams. “All these qualities align well with the mission and values of SUNY Old Westbury and the future on which our campus continues to focus.”
Dawes has varied experiences as an educator, civil rights attorney, and higher education administrator. Most recently, he serves as the executive chief diversity officer at CUNY’s Baruch College, where he promoted an inclusive, supportive environment for all members of the campus community while taking leadership responsibility regarding federal and state requirements on a variety of issues, policies, regulations and compliance standards related to areas including Affirmative Action, Title IX, and Equal Employment Opportunity.
Before Baruch, he was the inaugural Chief Diversity Officer for Equity and Inclusion for SUNY’s Empire State College. He was the lead administrator for all college-wide diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, including drafting the campus’ first DEI plan and convening both the campus’ Title IX Awareness and Compliance Committee and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council. His career also includes service as the university director of the CUNY Black Male Initiative, a system-wide program that successfully increased enrollment, retention and graduation rates of male students from populations underrepresented in higher education. His career in higher education also includes posts at the Hofstra University College of Law and CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Dawes earned his B.A. in Government and Africana Studies from Cornell University in 1988. He earned his J.D. from NYU School of Law in 1992, where he was a Root-Tilden-Snow Scholar, a Junior Fellow at the Center for International Studies, and an editor of the NYU Review of Law & Social Change. In 2015, he completed an LL.M. at Columbia Law School.
Following NYU, he clerked for federal judges on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He then worked as a litigation associate at a major New York City law firm and later served as a trial attorney in the Educational Opportunities Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice.