When a professor posted a Twitter thread about how Cornell University improved diversity in its computer-science PhD program, it quickly went viral.

“[W]e made a big step in improving diversity of the program. Let me tell you about it,” wrote David Bindel, the PhD admissions chair for Cornell University’s Computer Science department, earlier this month.

It’s clearly an issue that other higher ed leaders are interested in hearing about—the tweet has been shared more than 750 times and drew nearly 2,000 likes.

Computer science is “not just white dudes slinging code, and we all suffer for it when the world thinks that’s what it is,” Bindel wrote.

So how did Cornell do it? Bindel tells EdSurge that last year, Cornell had one Native American applicant, four African American and 17 hispanic applicants to its computer science PhD program, out of a pool of about 850 people. To encourage greater diversity in the next class. Bindel reached out to coordinators of the McNair Scholars Program, an organization that seeks to get undergraduate students—many of whom are underrepresented in graduate education—ready for graduate studies across the United States.

When Glendell Jones Jr. became the 17th president of Henderson State University six years ago, few watchers in higher education circles saw his ascendancy as a shift in the profile of college presidents.
As noteworthy as it was that he was the first African-American to serve as president or chancellor of a non-historically black college or university in Arkansas, less noted was another position he’d once held that is increasingly viewed as a possible path to the presidency: executive assistant to the chancellor for diversity initiatives.
Several other former college administrators who’ve served as chief diversity officers, or CDOs — a now common catchall term for positions such as vice chancellor for diversity and climate, vice president for institutional diversity, dean of diversity and academic engagement, and vice president for strategic and diversity initiatives — have become college or university presidents in recent years.
And as the list grows, some people are starting to describe, albeit cautiously, what is happening as a trend