Since the fall of 2019, sourav (pronounced “Show Rob”) has served as executive director of the Consortium on High Achievement and Success. He has two decades of professional experience across a broad variety of roles in the public, nonprofit, and postsecondary sectors, including many years working on issues pertaining to access, inclusion and representation in higher education.
Prior to joining CHAS, he was a research analyst for Vassar College’s Engaged Pluralism Initiative, a Mellon Foundation-funded project aimed at fostering a sense of affirmation and belonging on campus, particularly among students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Previously, he led the enrollment management team at the Yale School of Nursing, where he focused on improving the demographic representativeness of the student body and successfully doubled the proportion of students of color in the incoming class to nearly forty percent.
Earlier, as Assistant Provost at Wesleyan University, sourav tirelessly (albeit mostly unsuccessfully) advocated for expanding the breadth of curricular offerings and for standardizing faculty hiring practices to improve fairness in hiring across academic departments. At Wesleyan, his undergraduate alma mater, he also served in a number of other capacities over the years, including as Visiting Instructor of Quantitative Analysis and Government, as an Institutional Research Associate, and as Assistant Dean of Admission.
When opportunities present themselves, sourav enjoys occasionally writing, speaking, and teaching. In June, 2020, he penned an opinion piece for his hometown Columbus Underground, entitled “Anti-Blackness on a Pedestal – Why Columbus Statues Must Come Down in Columbus.” He also wrote an essay, “Sustainability Without Justice Just Sustains Injustice,” for Volume II of No Sustainability Without Justice: An Anthology on Racial Equity and Social Justice, published by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) in October, 2021.
He has recently participated as an invited panelist at equity and justice themed events at Penn State (“English and Equity”) and Virginia Tech (“Intersectional Environmental Justice: Interdisciplinary Conversations”). In fall 2022, sourav will be teaching a course on Contemporary Indian Politics at Connecticut College, a CHAS member institution.