The New Provost at Holy Names University in Oakland, California

Sheila Smith McKoy is the new provost and vice president for academic affairs at Holy Names University in Oakland, California.

Holy Names University was founded in 1868 by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. If offers 15 bachelor’s degrees and seven master’s degree programs. The university enrolls just over 600 undergraduate students and more than 300 graduate students, according to the latest figures furnished to the U.S. Department of Education. African Americans are 18 percent of the undergraduate student body.

Dr. Smith McKoy has been serving as chair of the department of English at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. A poet, fiction writer, and documentary filmmaker, she is currently co-editing “Teaching Literature and Writing in Prisons” for the Modern Language Association. Dr. Smith McKoy is the author of When Whites Riot: Writing Race and Violence in American and South African Culture (University of Wisconsin Press, 2001).

A native of Raleigh, North Carolina, Dr. Smith McKoy earned a bachelor’s degree at North Carolina State University, a master’s degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. at Duke University in Durham North Carolina.