Leadership

Dr. Byron P. White is Associate Provost for Urban Research and Community Engagement at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He oversees urbanCORE (Community-Oriented Research and Engagement), an office that is part of the UNC Charlotte engaged scholarship ecosystem. The Office is charged with mobilizing, assessing and advancing efforts that connect the University’s interdisciplinary research resources to community assets in order to co-produce transformative solutions to societal issues. Byron is also the appointed Professor of Practice in the Department of Communication Studies.

Prior to joining UNC Charlotte, Dr. White was the Executive Director of StrivePartnership, a Cincinnati-based collective impact organization focused on education improvement for urban learners from cradle to career, and the Vice President for its sponsor organization, KnowledgeWorks Foundation. He previously was Vice President for University Engagement and Chief Diversity Officer at Cleveland State University, Vice Chancellor for Economic Advancement for the University System of Ohio, and Associate Vice President for Community Engagement at Xavier University in Cincinnati.

Dr. White began his career as a newspaper journalist, having served as editorial page editor of The Cincinnati Post, and as an editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune and editor of the Tribune’s Urban Affairs Team. He later became the Tribune’s senior manager for community relations. Between newspaper stints, he worked on community development efforts in Cincinnati and Chicago’s West Side.

Dr. White is a Research Associate at the Kettering Foundation and serves on the Advisory Board of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. He is also on the Board of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at DePaul University. He has a doctorate in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in social science from the University of Chicago, and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University.