Sherilynn Black Named New Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement

Sherilynn Black, the current director of the Duke Office of Biomedical Graduate Diversity, has been named the newly created associate vice provost for faculty development, said Abbas Benmamoun, the vice provost for faculty advancement this week.

In a message to Duke faculty, Benmamoun said Black will be responsible for faculty development and success, including mentoring, support for pre-tenure and mid-career faculty, career pathways and professional development for non-tenure system faculty, and resources and programs for developing an inclusive climate within our academic units.

She will start the new position on Nov. 1.

Black is an assistant professor of the practice of medical education. She has been director of the Office of Biomedical Graduate Diversity since its establishment in 2010. In that role, she worked with units within the School of Medicine to identify highly promising and talented scientists, created administrative systems and programs to support faculty, and put in place effective mentoring programs and built partnerships with the Graduate School, Arts and Sciences, Pratt, the School of Nursing and other units on campus.

“Sherilynn is a highly-respected scholar and a proven leader in the area of student and faculty advancement and inclusion,” said Benmamoun in the message to the faculty. “She is well known on our campus and around the country as a dedicated, effective, and innovative leader and mentor. Her research focuses on the development and implementation of interventions to promote cultural awareness in mentoring, and on how to best increase efficacy in faculty mentoring throughout each stage of an academic career.

“Sherilynn also brings to the office a successful track record of securing external resources to support student and faculty advancement efforts from agencies and foundations such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Bayer Foundation, Merck Pharmaceuticals, The Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and others. As a trained neuroscientist, she works closely with the Society for Neuroscience and other scientific societies and foundations to create faculty development initiatives for postdocs and junior faculty. She is one of the Principal Investigators of the institutional Duke Biosciences Collaborative for Research Engagement (BioCoRE) Program, which she will continue to lead. She also leads national faculty development initiatives for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and NIH.”