New Job For Rita Geier

From a press release:

Rita Sanders Geier has been named associate to UT Knoxville Chancellor Loren Crabtree, and will help lead intercultural efforts and implement goals of the university's diversity plan and Ready for the World initiative....

Geier was a 23-year-old faculty member at Tennessee State University in 1968 when she filed the lawsuit after the University of Tennessee announced plans to expand in Nashville. She feared that UT-Nashville would become a four-year, predominantly white school with top-notch facilities while historically black TSU would be neglected.

The suit resulted in the 2001 Geier Consent Decree, which provided $77 million in state funds over six years to diversify student populations and faculty of all state higher education institutions. Since then, more than 1,300 black students have benefited from Geier-funded scholarships at UT Knoxville. Black enrollment on the Knoxville campus has grown from 6.4 percent in 2001 to 8.2 percent in 2006. About 9 percent of this year's freshmen are black....

Prior to joining UT, Geier worked at the Social Security Administration in Washington, D.C., as executive counselor to the commissioner for special initiatives, serving as principal adviser on Medicare appeals, identity theft and other initiatives.