Associate Chancellor Anna Branch Accepts Position at Rutgers

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Associate Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Enobong “Anna” Branch has announced that she will be leaving UMass to become the vice chancellor for diversity, inclusion, and community engagement at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, beginning in August.

Branch is also a professor of sociology and will continue that work at Rutgers as a tenured professor.

In her time at UMass, Branch oversaw the launch of the “Hate has No Home” and “Building a Community of Respect and Dignity” campaigns as well as the “Learning Communities” book group. She worked to establish the annual “Building Bridges” event with the Labor/Management Workplace Education Program and organized several teach-ins addressing anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racism. In September 2018, the university was awarded a $3 million National Science Foundation ADVANCE Institutional Transformation grant, with Branch as the principal investigator, to support the development of an innovative professional advancement model for underrepresented faculty in STEM fields.

Branch said, “It has been a true honor to lead our pursuit of aspirational goals for diversity and inclusion. The 2016 Campus Climate Survey was a defining moment for our campus – the high participation rate demonstrated our campus engagement, the transparency of our reporting reflected the sincerity of our leadership, and the changes we have pursued since the release of the abridged report in May 2017 have become a national model for how a campus facing challenges decidedly moves forward. There is still much work to do to live out our campus values to form and strengthen socially-just learning and working environments and create a campus climate where all members of the community can thrive. Through institutional investment and the countless people whose hands and hearts have contributed to this work we have made undeniable progress in pursuit of these goals. I am grateful for the privilege to have been a part of this work and thank you for believing in me and the possibility for impactful change.”

She added, “This is a bittersweet moment, I have been a member of this campus community for 12 years. I came to campus in 2007 as a postdoc and rose through the ranks to become associate chancellor. UMass will always have special meaning for me and while my affiliation is changing, I will remain engaged with the campus for years to come.”

Plans to select a successor to Branch are in the process of being developed.