Tabbye Chavous

Dr. Tabbye Chavous is the director of the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID), associate vice president for research, and a professor of education and professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. A native of Aiken, South Carolina, Dr. Chavous attended the University of Virginia where she received her bachelor’s degree and went on to earn a PhD in Community Psychology. Following her graduate work, Dr. Chavous entered the University of Michigan as an assistant professor and moved up the ranks to professor. Prior to her directorship of NCID, she served as chair of the Combined Program in Education & Psychology (CPEP) and as associate dean of academic programs and initiatives within the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan. She is also a co-founder, co-director, and principal investigator in U-M's Center for the Study of Black Youth in Context (CSBYC).

Dr. Chavous' expertise and research activities center around (1) social identity development among Black adolescents and young adults; (2) achievement motivation processes among ethnic minority students, including relations among individuals'racial/ethnic, gender, and academic identities; (3) educational transitions in secondary schooling and higher education; and (4) diversity and multicultural climates in secondary and higher education settings and implications for students' academic, social, and psychological adjustment. In collaboration with a number of her graduate student and postdoctoral mentees, she has published extensively in these areas.

Dr. Chavous’ undergraduate and graduate teaching interests and contributions focus on developmental, psychological, cultural, and organizational processes relevant to education and youth development more broadly. Examples include: adolescent psychology, with a focus on adolescent development in the context of schools, communities, and other societal institutions; community psychology; educational psychology and human development; foundations of teaching and learning; schools as organizations; race, ethnicity, and culture in education; and social science and the "achievement gap", or social science approaches for understanding and addressing educational disparities across race, ethnicity, gender, and social class.

In addition to her directorship at the NCID and CSBYC, Dr. Chavous mentors students across diverse academic and disciplinary backgrounds in education and psychology.