Tanya Ennis named SpectrumX & Research Support Office Broadening Participation Director

Tanya Ennis has assumed a new role as the SpectrumX & Research Support Office Broadening Participation Director, effective March 21. She will be reporting both to Scott Palo, the associate director of SpectrumX, and to the associate dean for research in the College of Engineering & Applied Science, University of Colorado Boulder. 

Ennis led the broadening participation plan for the SpectrumX Center NSF proposal and will be working with the college Research Support Office to develop similar plans for grant proposals as well as a comprehensive strategy for broadening research participation plans across the college. Her work with SpectrumX will have a national impact through the 13 research institutions and 14 minority-serving institutions associated with the center and will provide a pathway for increasing diversity among our college graduate students. Ennis has previously supported broadening participation plans for four NSF CAREER grant proposals.

Ennis has been the director of the BOLD Center since 2019. Under her leadership, the Engineering GoldShirt Program received recognition in 2020 from the National Academy of Engineering as an “exemplary admissions practice that promotes diversity in engineering” and the BOLD Center was named 2018 Program of the Year by CoNECD, the Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity. She received the CU President’s Diversity Award in 2015. Ennis successfully defended her dissertation last week and will be graduating this spring with her Ph.D. from the Learning Sciences & Human Development program in CU Boulder’s School of Education.

By: Keith Molenaar

Acting Dean and K. Stanton Lewis Professor