College changes Chief Diversity Officer title to Senior Advisor to the President

Tuesday, July 1, the College of William and Mary changed former Chief Diversity Officer Fanchon Glover’s title to Senior Advisor to the President. The College also renamed the Center for Student Diversity to the Student Center for Inclusive Excellence. The change comes after the Board of Visitors took a neutral stance on DEI initiatives in the April 25 passage of HC-3 titled “Merit-based excellence, student opportunity and freedom from discrimination.” In the meeting, the Board voted for the resolution to support the College’s “merit-based” approach to education without directly eliminating DEI or changing the Office of Diversity and Inclusion or the Center for Student Diversity at the time.

College Assistant Director of Media Relations Nathan Warters explained that the College created these changes for consistency purposes.

“William & Mary adopted the values-based and merit-based inclusive excellence framework in 2021 when we launched the university’s Board-approved strategic plan,” Warters wrote in an email to The Flat Hat. “President Rowe detailed in her April 25 message to campus, and the William & Mary Board of Visitors affirmed in their recent resolution, the university’s commitment to this work. The recent changes simply align nomenclature across the institution to ensure consistency with the inclusive excellence framework adopted several years ago.”

While students have expressed concerns over the elimination of DEI programs and offices in 2025, Warters stated that the renaming of the CSD and Office of Diversity and Inclusion can be likened to the renaming of other institutions on campus.

“It is common for names of departments, programs, and centers to evolve names over time,” Warters wrote. “At William & Mary recent examples include: the Kinesiology Department became Health Sciences; the Institute for the Theory & Practice of International Relations became the Global Research Institute; and Office of Greek Life became Fraternity & Sorority Life.”

Warters stated that this evolution of names also applies to job titles. 

“In terms of Dr. Glover’s title, for individual positions like this that have such a broad scope of work that continually evolves, it makes sense to keep titles evergreen,” Warters wrote.

Brian Whitson, the College’s Chief Communications Officer, added that the College made this decision because its new inclusive excellence framework.

“This values-based and merit-based approach is grounded in the idea that a plurality of perspectives, experiences, talents, backgrounds, and expertise contributes to the vitality of our community and the success of our core mission of teaching, learning and research,” explained Whitson.

ADDITION (07/29/2025): This article was updated by the Standards & Practices Editor to include a statement from Brian Whitson.