Sherri L. Sanders

Sherri Sanders serves as the Director of Extension Services and a Research Scientist with the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on issues within higher education related to gender equity and inclusion; strategic recruitment and retention of underrepresented communities in computing; and sustainable and systemic organizational culture change.

As director of extension services, she is responsible for collaborating with senior leadership to establish and execute the program’s strategic vision and research at both the undergraduate and graduate levels; providing leadership and guidance to the program’s core team, consultants, and academic department participants; and facilitating research projects aligned with NCWIT’s mission. Dr. Sanders and team members translate theory into practice while utilizing evaluation reports and data to enhance organizational culture change processes within computing departments. Employing knowledge from her over thirty years as a senior-level university administrator at multiple universities, Dr. Sanders and team members create and employ research-based practical resources designed specifically for undergraduate and graduate departments of computing to use for diversifying their student communities and for creating more inclusive departmental cultures.

Before joining NCWIT in 2017, Dr. Sanders served as a senior administrator at The University of Texas at Austin for twenty-nine years, most recently as the associate vice president for inclusion and equity. In this role, she championed initiatives focused on university-wide systemic change with an emphasis on the advancement of excellence and diversity as mutually reinforcing goals. In this role, she led campus-wide initiatives including strategic diversity planning, campus climate response, faculty recruitment and retention, and equal opportunity law and policy administration. Prior to assuming a leadership role in the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement in 2007, she was a member of the Office of the Dean of Students senior leadership team for 19 years and served both as assistant and associate dean of students. While at UT-Austin, Dr. Sanders also served as a clinical associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy and taught graduate-level classes on college student development theory.

Throughout her tenure at UT Austin, she received numerous awards, including the Parents’ Association Outstanding Student Affairs Administrator Award and the Margaret C. Berry Outstanding Contribution to Student Life Award. She was also selected to represent the university in the prestigious Leadership Texas class of 1999. In 2004, she was honored as a participant in the Fulbright Scholar Program in Germany.