Dr. Judy ‘J.J.’ Jackson, set to become the University of Kentucky’s first vice president for institutional diversity, has big plans for developing and implementing a diversity agenda that she says is essential for learning.

Now a dean at New York’s Vassar College, Jackson says she’s “excited” to be a part of something she describes as a “groundbreaking, history-making vision” for the 143-year-old university.

Jackson, who starts this summer, will work strategically to craft UK’s diversity agenda, which she says is essential to establishing a strong foundation for learning. She notes that one of the most important goals during her first year at UK will be to conduct a university-wide “gap analysis” to devise various strategies on recruiting a diverse group of students and faculty.

“Often times, people don’t think of diversity and excellence as the same concept … the goal and the mission that the University of Kentucky has embarked upon demands that people think of diversity and excellence as conceptual cohabitants,” says Jackson, whose responsibilities will include advising the university’s president and provost on matters relating to academic, fiscal and administrative policy.

“It has to do with assessing where every unit in the institution stands and where it stands on the academic landscape. No institute of higher education is going to achieve its greatest glory without a serious diversity agenda,” says Jackson, who earned her doctoral degree in administration, planning and social policy with a concentration in higher education from Harvard University.

The announcement of Jackson’s hiring comes several months after two racially motivated incidents erupted on the UK campus. According to published reports, campus police investigated a “threatening racial epithet” that was written on the door of a Black student’s dorm room in October. That incident followed one in which the university’s independent student newspaper published a satirical cartoon, using “offensive” images of slavery in a dialogue about the recruitment of African-Americans into White sororities and fraternities, says UK’s provost, Dr. Kumble Subbaswamy.