Sylvia Carey-Butler

Dr. Sylvia R. Carey-Butler joined Kennesaw State University as the Chief Diversity Officer in July 2019. She most recently served as Assistant Chancellor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. She has been an educator for over 38 years. Dr. Carey-Butler has served as interim executive director of the United Negro College Fund's (UNCF) Institute for Capacity Building and was the inaugural Director of UNCF's Enrollment Management Program. She has held numerous positions in higher education in New York State. She also served as Assistant Provost and Dean of Honors at Dillard University in New Orleans, Associate Dean of Studies at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

She is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2018 UW Oshkosh “MLK, Jr. Drum Major Award, named one of the State of Wisconsin’s 2018 most influential African Americans, an Honorary Doctorate from the State University of New York at Oneonta, her undergraduate institution, the SUNY Oneonta Alumni of Distinction Honor and the 2006 Alumnae of the Year Award at SUNY-Oneonta, the first African American to receive the award. In 2005, she received the Provost's Extra Mile Award at Dillard University. Dr. Carey-Butler was the 1996 recipient of Lafayette College's People’s Choice Award, an honor she is very proud of to this day because she was overwhelmingly selected for the award by students. Dr. Carey-Butler was inducted into her hometown of Schenectady, New York's School District Hall of Fame in June 2014. In December 2015, Dr. Carey-Butler received the UW System Outstanding Women of Color Award.

Dr. Carey-Butler has researched and presented extensively on student recruitment and retention in higher education, African American women administrators in the academy and African American males in higher education. She has designed the diversity and inclusion curriculum for the American Council on Education’s Fellows Program. She is the former chair of the Oshkosh Area Community Food Pantry and the Oshkosh Housing Authority Boards.

She was awarded a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration and Policy from Vanderbilt University, and an M.A. Social Science with an emphasis in Counseling from Binghamton University. During her career, she has addressed issues of diversity and inclusiveness within college and university communities and established corporate, foundation, secondary and higher education partnerships to support access to higher education.