For college presidents at a loss over how to choose a chief diversity officer and what role that person should play, a paper just published by the American Council on Education answers those questions and more.

The paper, “The Chief Diversity Officer: A Primer for College and University Presidents,” is meant to “infuse discipline and clarity into the process of developing chief diversity officers’ capabilities in higher education,” said Damon A. Williams, one of the authors, in a news release issued by ACE.

Mr. Williams, an assistant vice provost for multicultural and international affairs at the University of Connecticut, wrote the paper with Katrina C. Wade-Golden, senior research scientist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor’s Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives.

The authors recommend, among other things, that:

Chief diversity officers report to the president or chief academic officer. Senior leaders require the diversity officers to collaborate with key departments across the institution. The officers be given both symbolic and actual resources to accomplish their goals.

The paper also examines the growth of chief diversity officers on American campuses in recent years and details three models of organizational diversity in higher education. —Audrey Williams June