Ralina Joseph will be UCLA’s inaugural vice provost of inclusive excellence, according to a Monday announcement.

Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt announced the appointment of the University of Washington professor of communication in a Monday campuswide email. Joseph, who is also an adjunct professor of American ethnic studies and gender, women and sexuality studies at UW, is currently the UW Graduate School’s associate dean of equity and justice. She will enter the role on or before Sept. 1, according to the email.

“Professor Joseph is a respected scholar, educator and facilitator of communication and difference, whose community-engaged scholarship and teaching probes questions of how inequalities perpetuate through mediated and interpersonal interactions,” Hunt said in the email.

Joseph will lead the Office of Inclusive Excellence, the creation of which Hunt announced in October. The office partially replaced the functions of the former Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Joseph will succeed Interim Vice Provost of EDI Mitchell Chang, who has been in the position since the former Vice Chancellor Anna Spain Bradley stepped down in 2023.

The search for the office’s inaugural vice provost began in October, with the email announcing the search listing the expected compensation for the role as being between $320,000 to $440,000 annually. 

The search committee for the vice provost included Abel Valenzuela Jr., the dean of the Division of Social Sciences, and David Myers, a distinguished professor of history and the faculty director of the university’s Dialogue across Difference initiative, according to Hunt’s email.

Hunt thanked Chang for his work in the role.

“We look forward to his continued leadership and contributions to campus as he returns to his research and teaching this summer,” he said in the email.