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Name
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Bettye Parker Smith
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Bio
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Bettye Parker Smith is an educator, lecturer, and writer on issues related to African American women writers. She most recently served as Executive Provost and Vice President at Tougaloo College before retiring as Provost Emerita. Before assuming this role, she served as Provost/Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Interim President at Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she is the first woman to hold these positions. Having completed her administrative roles as Provost/Vice President for Academic Affairs and Interim President, Dr. Parker Smith was a full-tenured professor in the Departments of English and African World Studies at Dillard University.
Before assuming these roles, she completed four years as Vice President and Senior Program Officer for the Florida Education Fund located in Tampa, Florida, and six years at Tougaloo College in Mississippi where she was Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College. Dr. Parker Smith also served as an administrator and Professor of English at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago for several years and taught African American Literature at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She holds a Ph.D. in African American Studies with a concentration in African American women writers from the Union Institute for Graduate Studies. She has done post-graduate work at Bryn Maw College and Harvard University.
Dr. Parker Smith was recently invited to assist Lincoln University in Missouri in reimagining its School of Arts and Sciences. Among other assignments, she guided departments in reimagining and reconstructing curricula in the institutional review process.
Dr. Parker Smith is co-editor of Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature, the first anthology on Black women writers. This book paved the way for numerous manuscripts later published by Black women writers, some of which she is a contributor to. Dr. Parker Smith is also published and has lectured widely on Black women writers, and issues related to leadership in higher education. As Provost at Dillard, she created the Jubilee Scholars Program, a retention initiative for first-year undergraduate students. Further, she has traveled widely throughout Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and Europe. She resides in Jackson, Mississippi.
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Affiliation
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Tougaloo College
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Position
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Provost Emerita
Khirsten L. Scott