Dear Members of the UMBC Community,
I am delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Tyson King-Meadows as Associate Provost for Strategic Initiatives effective January 6, 2021.
As Associate Provost for Strategic Initiatives, Dr. King-Meadows will advance UMBC’s mission by working with the Provost on matters related to revising the General Education Program and developing new cross-university initiatives that seed and scale strategic partnerships addressing systemic barriers to inclusive excellence.
To carry out these responsibilities, Dr. King-Meadows will work collaboratively with academic units and colleges across UMBC. Reporting to the Provost, Dr. King-Meadows will work with faculty, deans, shared governance, and other stakeholders to develop a process for reviewing and revising UMBC’s approach to general education in alignment with UMBC’s Strategic Plan priorities and recommendations. He will also develop new partnerships and strengthen existing ones between UMBC and academic learned societies, focusing on developing effective collaborations that reinvigorate UMBC’s efforts to identify, support, and recruit prospective underrepresented minority faculty and students.
For the past year, Dr. King-Meadows has served as Special Assistant to the Provost for Faculty Development and Engagement. In this role, he identified exemplary institutional models, best practices, and high impact programs for enhancing faculty development, and advised the Provost on ways certain practices might inform implementation of the UMBC Strategic Plan. Last year, Dr. King-Meadows was awarded the prestigious American Council on Education (ACE) Fellowship and served as a fellow in the Provost’s Office at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). In this role, he advised on matters related to faculty advancement and furthered the implementation of the university’s groundbreaking “Think Big” strategic plan, which emphasized enhancing interdisciplinarity in research and in teaching, as well as enhancing community partnerships that deepened CWRU’s social impact.
Along with his experiences as an ACE Fellow, Dr. King-Meadows brings to his new role extensive experience in collaborative leadership, innovative thinking, and building strategic partnerships. He served as co-chair of the Provost’s Executive Committee for the Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement of Underrepresented Minority Faculty, and played a significant role in conceptualizing and advancing the Postdoctoral Fellowship for Faculty Diversity and the Emerging Scholars Program. He has also served as chair of the Black Faculty Committee, as a member of the Strategic Planning Steering Committee, as chair of the Department of Africana Studies, and as the Associate Dean for Research and College Affairs in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Within the discipline of political science, Dr. King-Meadows has served as chair of the Committee on the Status of Blacks in the Profession for the American Political Science Association, as a member of the executive council of the Midwest Political Science Association, and as president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. He has also served as a local, state, regional, and national officer for Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
Dr. King-Meadows joined UMBC in 2003 and is a professor of political science. He also holds affiliate appointments in the School of Public Policy; the Language, Literacy, and Culture doctoral program; and the Department of Africana Studies. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina and received his B.A. in political science from North Carolina Central University.
Prior to joining the UMBC faculty, he was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in the Department of Political Science at the University of Ghana, a W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow at Harvard University, and held a faculty position at Middle Tennessee State University. Since joining the UMBC faculty, Dr. King-Meadows has won numerous prestigious research grants and awards, including the National Academy of Sciences’ Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and the American Political Science Association’s Congressional Fellowship, where he worked for the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary. As a political scientist, Dr. King-Meadows’s work explores the nature and consequence of black interest representation and black political engagement against the backdrop of economic disparities and sociopolitical stratification occurring in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century. His extensive publication record contributes to multiple fields within political science, and he has lectured widely on electoral politics, public opinion, election law, and African American/Black Politics.
UMBC is very fortunate to have someone of Dr. King-Meadows’s impressive experience and talent to serve as Associate Provost for Strategic Initiatives.
Please join me in congratulating Dr. King-Meadows on his new appointment and supporting him in this important endeavor.
Provost Philip Rous
Provost Philip Rous
