The dean of students at Claremont McKenna College is quite capable of juggling competing demands. But given the public attention on sexual assaults on campuses, her additional role of Title IX coordinator, in charge of prevention and response, was unsustainable.
This month the university announced that Nyree Gray, an associate professor and dean of students and diversity affairs at Southwestern Law School, would take on the newly created position of Title IX coordinator and chief civil-rights officer. “We wanted to bring greater legal sophistication to the role,” says Hiram E. Chodosh, Claremont McKenna’s president, “and alleviate the burden on the dean of students’ office.”
Activism and heightened federal scrutiny of how colleges respond to sexual assault have paved the way for the newly dedicated position of Title IX coordinator. The job dates back a few decades—the federal gender-equity law known as Title IX was passed in 1972—but its scope has expanded, especially recently, calling for greater professionalization of the role. On a growing number of campuses, what used to be a part-time job or an add-on for a faculty or staff member is now full time. In the last 18 months, dozens of institutions—including Franklin & Marshall College, Stanford University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—have hired Title IX coordinators to handle the evolving expectations and legal obligations regarding campus sexual assault.
The pressure on colleges to prevent sexual assault and handle cases more effectively has grown steadily since 2011, when the U.S. Department of Education indicated stricter enforcement of Title IX, which compels campus officials to investigate and resolve students’ reports of rape, whether or not the police are involved. The department’s Office for Civil Rights is now investigating 85 colleges for possible violations of Title IX related to alleged sexual violence. This year the office announced a few harsh settlements requiring institutions to strengthen their policies.
Meanwhile, the White House has issued pointers for colleges, federal and state lawmakers have proposed new legislation, and students—both alleged victims and perpetrators—are filing lawsuits and federal complaints against their colleges.
So the hiring trend appears poised to continue. And the steady stream of job ads has created some competition for the talent that colleges and universities of all types are looking to tap.
They’re scrambling to find people with experience responding to sexual-violence complaints and the ability to interpret federal regulations. Among new hires are former lawyers with the Office for Civil Rights and longtime equal-opportunity advocates. Top administrators want them on campus to update policies and procedures, field students’ reports, create new training programs, and run prevention efforts.
New positions in higher education sometimes stem from a scandal, such as the Clery Act compliance coordinator now responsible for crime reporting at Pennsylvania State University. Or, as with sustainability coordinators a decade ago, a trend can drive hires. In other cases the law generates jobs: Disability-services coordinators, for example, quickly joined higher education’s professional ranks.
This time it’s crisis, trend, law—all three.
“In the current environment, being a Title IX coordinator can be a challenging assignment,” says S. Daniel Carter, a national victims’ rights advocate and director of the 32 National Campus Safety Initiative. “But it’s an important challenge for higher education to take on.”
With new regulations issued this month, federal legislation pending, and ever more investigations and lawsuits, Title IX coordinators have their work cut out for them. “For the foreseeable future,” says Mr. Carter, “there will be a high level of scrutiny from their own campus community, the public, and the federal government, because the stakes are so high.”
‘True Commitment’
The qualifications that colleges seek for the job suggest few obvious pipelines. Some campuses want candidates with experience working with students; others all but require a law degree.
Some considerations, like location, are typical in any search. The amount of autonomy the position offers and where it falls in the administrative hierarchy can also make a difference. And of course, salary can be an issue—particularly for the candidates with law degrees.
Finding a good fit can be tricky, says Susan B. May, a principal at the search firm Storbeck/Pimentel & Associates, who has conducted searches for Title IX coordinators. “In many ways, it’s somewhat similar to a presidential search. You can’t just put an ad out and discover your next president,” she says. “The talent is out there,” she adds, but strong candidates might be “difficult to identify from a distance.”
Some are motivated by the broader mission of gender equity. One way to lure top candidates, says Ms. May, is for senior administrators to signal that they are thinking about the position “not only in the narrow compliance sense, but in the spirit of Title IX.”
The opportunity to shape campus attitudes toward gender equity and combat gender-based violence drew Belinda M. Guthrie to Santa Clara University this month. From the late 1990s through 2012, she had been at Vassar College, where she served as its first director of equal opportunity and built a student-disabilities-services program from scratch.
“In 1996, colleges and universities across the country were in many ways in a very similar position as they are today with Title IX,” Ms. Guthrie says. “They were trying to figure out how to address the needs of students with disabilities.”
Now they’re trying to protect victims of sexual assault. That made Ms. Guthrie, who had gone to work for an advocacy group for people with learning disabilities, want to return to a college campus, one with “a true commitment to professionalizing Title IX,” she says.
Ms. Guthrie’s priorities for her first month at Santa Clara include minor adjustments in response to the most recent federal regulations and improvements to the university’s sexual-assault-and-harassment-prevention programs for faculty, staff, and students. She’s also planning to examine procedures established years ago to see if they need to be updated to reflect current campus culture. Another factor in California is a law enacted in September requiring colleges to adopt an “affirmative consent” standard, defining consent in students’ sexual encounters in terms of “yes means yes” rather than the traditional “no means no.”
With so much in flux, Title IX coordinator is a high-stress position even at a college not on the federal-investigation list, which has grown by 30 since April. “Some happen to be in the spotlight and some aren’t right now,” says Ms. May. “But they could be tomorrow. I think everybody recognizes that.”
Learning Curve
That recognition drove the first wave of Title IX hires. Colleges want to comply with the law, protect students, and publicly signal their commitment to both. In a sector that’s big on task forces, putting a face to the issue is a bold step.
Title IX coordinators readily acknowledge pros and cons to working in an area with so much scrutiny. One upside, they say, is the platform to discuss sexual-violence prevention and response in depth with various audiences. “I don’t feel like I have to get people’s attention anymore,” says Dawn Floyd, the newly hired Title IX coordinator at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “People are familiar with the issues now,” she says. “They are willing to talk about it.”
Ms. Floyd, a former student-affairs administrator who most recently worked at a law firm, arrived on campus in June and set about establishing her role and growing office, as well as revising policies and procedures in advance of the academic year.
For Annie N. Kerrick, who became director of Title IX and disability-law compliance at Boise State University in July 2013, the learning curve included getting to know the ins and outs of a public institution with more than 22,000 students. Not quite a year into her tenure, Ms. Kerrick, who had been a lawyer for the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence, oversaw the adoption of a new gender-based-violence policy updating the steps for the university to take when students file reports. The change, which had been in the works, came not long after two former athletes sued Boise State, saying they had been sexually harassed and assaulted and the university had done nothing about it.
At Swarthmore College, Kaaren M. Williamsen, Title IX coordinator since July, is dealing with a federal investigation, which can involve visits and requests for information from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. She is also reviewing how closely Swarthmore’s response to students’ reports of assault and subsequent disciplinary proceedings match federal guidelines.
“A lot of the national attention is focused on what’s not working, but I also try to pay attention to what’s working,” says Ms. Williamsen, who was previously a deputy Title IX coordinator and director of the Gender and Sexuality Center at Carleton College. “These new jobs are really not just about compliance anymore,” she says, but also campus climate.
Those are weighty responsibilities. For Ms. Floyd, it helps to be part of a public-university system, with an “automatic network” of counterparts. She has tapped into their knowledge even as she has doled out some herself. “We’re all grateful for collegiality in this area,” she says.
Title IX coordinators’ ranks are still growing, even without a career track that prepares people for the job or the pressures that come with it.
Other new positions are Title IX investigators, as many colleges move away from a model in which faculty panels hear sexual-assault cases to one in which professional investigators resolve them. UNC-Charlotte, Claremont McKenna, New York University, and the University of Delaware are among several institutions now hiring investigators. Harvard University has hired temporary help to handle cases while it searches for its second and third investigators, The Harvard Crimson reported.
Where Title IX coordinators are in place, the workload shows no signs of easing. “We’re in a period where the laws are changing rapidly, and there are multiple and competing financial demands on institutions,” says Ms. Guthrie, of Santa Clara. “Generally most institutions want to do the right thing,” she says, but “some schools are struggling to keep up.”
Title IX-Coordinator Positions Proliferate
Many colleges are hiring full-time Title IX coordinators to navigate the intricacies of the federal gender-equity law, which compels colleges to investigate and resolve reports of sexual assault. Job ads often list law degrees among preferred qualifications.
Institution: Harvard U.
Start date: March 13
Title: Title IX officer
Select qualifications:
-In-depth knowledge of Title IX regulations and policies
-Experience working in a large, decentralized research university desired
-Ability to conduct research and analyze data
Reports to: Chief diversity officer
Person hired: Mia Karvonides
Prior experience: Lawyer in U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights
Institution: Occidental College
Start date: February 2014
Title: Title IX coordinator
Select qualifications:
-Master’s degree in business, human resources, higher-education administration, or other relevant discipline required, law degree preferred
-Experience in complaint resolution, investigations, and grievances
-Higher-education experience preferred
Reports to: President
Person hired: Ruth Jones
Prior experience: Law professor for 17 years, associate dean for two years
Institution: U. of Colorado at Boulder
Start date: July 2014
Title: Director of institutional equity and compliance & Title IX coordinator
Select qualifications:
-Three years of supervisory experience
-Experience in responding to sexual-harassment and sexual-violence complaints
-Ability to lead and inspire people with different interests and perspectives
Reports to: Chancellor
Person hired: Valerie Simons
Prior experience: Founder and managing director of the Education Law Group, a law firm that represents students in federal civil-rights cases
Institution: Allegheny College
Start date: September 2014
Title: Title IX coordinator
Select qualifications:
-Higher-education background strongly desired
-Clear understanding of how recent Title IX developments are changing the conversation on campuses nationwide
-Proven track record of supporting and working with students
Reports to: Executive vice president
Person hired: Catherine Pope
Prior experience: Deputy Title IX coordinator, Purdue U.
Institution: George Washington U.
Start date: November 2014
Title: Title IX coordinator
Select qualifications:
-Seven to eight years of appropriate experience
-Administrative experience in higher education preferred, especially in student life or a nonprofit that deals with sexual misconduct
-Ability to communicate effectively and use discretion and good judgment
Reports to: Vice president for diversity and inclusion
Person hired: Rory Muhammad
Prior experience: Title IX coordinator at George Mason U.