The Rise of the Chief Diversity Officer

By BEN GOSE

Michael J. Tate runs an operation with the kind of resources that many small colleges would envy. He has an annual budget of $3-million and a full-time staff of 55, including two people focused exclusively on communications and a development officer who's angling to raise $10-million. All this is in a unit — the office of the vice president for equity and diversity — that didn't even exist here at Washington State University in the summer of 2004.

Nearly every