Christine Yoshinaga-Itano has been appointed interim associate vice chancellor for the Office of Diversity and Equity at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Provost Phil DiStefano announced.
"I am very pleased that Professor Yoshinaga-Itano is willing to take on this important leadership position on the campus," DiStefano said. "She has the respect of faculty from around the campus and has served as a mentor and role model to numerous women and faculty of color since she has been at CU-Boulder."
Yoshinaga-Itano replaces Ofelia Miramontes, who recently resigned the position to return to the faculty in the School of Education. DiStefano said he would announce a search process for the recruitment of a permanent associate vice chancellor in the spring semester.
The Office of Diversity and Equity was formed in 1998 to provide dedicated leadership for campus diversity.
In her interim role as leader of the Office of Diversity and Equity, Yoshinaga-Itano will coordinate campus efforts to support programs and policies related to diversity on campus, in addition to providing assistance for faculty, staff and students through the CU-Boulder department of equal opportunity.
Yoshinaga-Itano is professor and former chair of the department of speech, language and hearing sciences. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on language acquisition, pediatric audiology and communication skills for individuals with hearing loss. She has also served as acting program director of the women's studies program for two years.
Her research interests are in the area of language development of children with hearing loss. She has directed several projects for deaf and hard-of-hearing children, including infants and toddlers from non-English-speaking homes, for the Colorado Department of Education and the National Institutes of Health.
As a direct result of this research, almost all of the 4 million infants born in hospitals in the United States currently have their hearing screened prior to hospital discharge and universal newborn hearing screening also is being instituted in countries throughout the world.
Yoshinaga-Itano received her doctorate in audiology and hearing impairment at Northwestern University. She has been a member of the CU-Boulder faculty since 1986.
For more information on the CU-Boulder Office of Diversity and Equity visit the Web site at .