05/13/93
CONTACT: Stanford University News Service (650) 723-2558
STANFORD -- Stanford President Gerhard Casper on Wednesday, May 12, named Judith Little acting director of the university's Office for Multicultural Development.
Little, who has a doctorate in psychology from Cornell University, previously has served as associate affirmative action officer and chairwoman of the African American Staff Group. She succeeds Sharon Parker, who resigned, citing personal reasons, including the fact that her family lives in the Washington, D.C., area, although she has been based at Stanford since 1990.
Casper also announced that Al Camarillo, professor of history and associate dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, had agreed to chair a group of faculty, staff and students to advise the president on what Stanford should look for in a new permanent head of the office.
"Professor Camarillo has graciously agreed to help us think about this important position and its function," Casper said. "I know few universities that are better positioned than Stanford to be a place of true diversity, and we will seek how to best fulfill that goal."
Camarillo said his role would flow naturally out of his chairmanship of the University Committee on Minority Issues (UCMI), which spent more than a year and a half in a systematic assessment of minority issues, and published a report in 1989.
"The connection of our final report recommendations to the Office for Multicultural Development, previously the Affirmative Action Office, is an extremely important one," Camarillo said. "I want to represent the continuity of issues that revolve around the importance and integrity of that office."
Little, too, cited continuity in her selection.
"Since my time in Affirmative Action during 1989-90, I have remained passionately concerned about multicultural issues," she said. "This appointment is a rare opportunity for me to use my professional skills in tandem with my philosophical orientation, and I am gratified by the display of trust the president has shown in me."
Little, 44, first came to Stanford in 1975 as assistant dean of graduate studies, and earned two masters degrees - in drama and psychology - while in that position. After going to Cornell for her doctorate, she returned to Stanford in 1983 as associate director of development in the university's fund-raising office.
After a special assignment as associate affirmative action officer from October 1989 to August 1990, she was director of hospital development for a year before becoming associate director of foundation and corporate relations in the Office of Development. She will take a leave from that office to assume the acting position.
Little was chairwoman of the African American Staff Group at Stanford for 1991-92, and is a member of the university's Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility. Since 1989, she has been president of the board of Touchstone Support Network, a Bay Area agency that provides services to seriously ill children, and since 1984 an organizer of the annual food drive of the Ecumenical Hunger Program of Palo Alto.
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