Daryl G. Smith

Daryl G. Smith is Senior Research Fellow and Professor Emerita of Education and Psychology at The Claremont Graduate University. Prior to assuming her current faculty position at CGU, Smith served as Dean of Students and then as VP for Planning and Research at Scripps (and psychology professor) from 1975-1987. Her research, teaching, and publications have been in the areas of organizational implications of diversity, special purpose institutions including women’s colleges, assessment and evaluation, leadership and change, institutional research, governance, diversity in STEM fields, and faculty diversity.

In addition to numerous articles and papers, she is an author or co-author of Diversity’s Promise for Higher Education: Making it Work (2024, 4th ed), Framing Diversity Work Today: An Imperative for Excellence for a Pluralistic Society; Diversity in Higher Education: Emerging Cross-national Perspectives on Institutional Transformation, Leadership Excellence in a Pluralistic Society, Building Capacity for Diversity and Inclusion in Academic Medicine, Achieving Faculty Diversity: Debunking The Myths, Interrupting The Usual: Successful Strategies for Hiring Diverse Faculty, Organizational Learning a Tool for Diversity and Institutional Effectiveness, Strategic Evaluation: An Imperative for the Future of Campus Diversity, Strategic Governance: Making Big Decisions Better, Taking Women Seriously: Lessons and Legacies for Educating the Majority, Studying Diversity in Higher Education: Lessons From the Field, Making a Real Difference with Diversity: A Guide to Institutional Change. and Diversity in Higher Education: A Work in Progress. In partnership with five other evaluators of national diversity projects, she is a co-author of To Form a More Perfect Union: Campus Diversity Initiatives, A Diversity Research Agenda, and Assessing Campus Diversity Initiatives.

She has served as an evaluator and consultant to numerous projects and campuses across the country and to foundations such as the James Irvine Foundation, the Haas Jr. Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and The Hewlett Foundation. She served on the advisory committee of several NSF Advance grants. She has been on the advisory board for the Converge project on diversity and inclusion in the health professions at Harvard Medical School and consulted with the AAMC. She has also served as a faculty member for the Diversity Leadership Institute of the AACN. She has served on a NADOHE task force developing the standards and practices for senior diversity officers and as a faculty member for their diversity leadership institutes. Smith also served as one of three Principals responsible for the evaluation of the Campus Diversity Initiative for the James Irvine Foundation in collaboration with the Association of American Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C. This five-year project involved working with 28 private colleges and universities in California to develop their capacity to sustain and monitor progress on institutional diversity. She served as part of two U.S. delegations to Ford Foundation sponsored trinational conferences (India, South Africa, U.S.) on campus diversity, higher education, and democracy, that took place in South Africa and the United States for which she wrote a paper on issues of evaluation. Smith was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in South Africa in 2010 and 2012. Smith received her BA from Cornell University in Mathematics, an MA from Stanford, and PhD in Social Psychology and Higher Education from Claremont Graduate University.

Smith, D.G.  (2024) (3rd edition, 2nd reprinting, 2021).  Diversity’s Promise for Higher Education:  Making It Work.  Baltimore, MD:  Johns Hopkins University Press.

Smith, D.G. (2024) Framing Diversity Work Today: An Imperative for Excellence for a Pluralistic Society, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 56:1, 15-22, DOI:10.1080/00091383.2024.2297629

Smith, D.G. (2021) “Leadership excellence in a pluralistic society: The role of identity and inclusive leadership” In B. M. Ferdman, N, J. Prime, R.E. Riggio (Eds) Inclusive Leadership: Transforming Diverse Lives, Workplaces, and Societies, Taylor & Francis.

Smith, D. G. (Ed.) (2014). Diversity in Higher Education: Emerging Cross-national Perspectives on Institutional Transformation, Taylor & Francis.

Worthington, R. L., Stanley, C.A., Smith, D.G. (2020). Advancing the Professionalization of Diversity Officers in Higher Education: Report of the Presidential Task Force on the Revision of the NADOHE Standards of Professional Practice, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 13(1), 1-22.

Kulp, A., Wolf-Wendel, L., Smith, D.G. (2019). The Possibility of Promotion: How Race and Gender Predict Promotion Clarity for Associate Professors, Teacher’s College Record, 21(5), http://www.tcrecord.org ID 22614.

Smith, D.G. (2017). Progress and paradox for women in US higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 42(4), 812-822.