Cole comes to UCLA from the College of William & Mary, where he was an Associate Professor of Higher Education and Affiliated Faculty of History. He is the author of “The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom,” to be published this fall by Princeton University Press.
He is also the recipient of the 2018 Early Career Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education, and was named a 2017 Mellon Emerging Faculty Leader Award from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, which recognized him as a professor poised “to play a significant role in shaping American higher education.” Cole also received a 2015 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, one of the most prestigious awards for scholars working in critical areas of education research, as well as research fellowships and grants from Princeton University and the University of Chicago. He has also been a Dean’s Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Professor Cole earned a Ph.D. in Higher Education from Indiana University and his bachelor’s degree in Speech Communication from Tennessee State University. His research uses extensive historical materials to address problems and issues in higher education, particularly through research on college presidents and race on and off campus.