Departmental Program Contacts

The Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence and Graduate Studies leads a team focused at the graduate level on inclusion, equity, and diversity issues and supporting current students in their progress toward their degrees. A goal of the office is to see more underrepresented students complete the undergraduate curriculum successfully to be masters and Ph.D. students in the next five years, with a more reaching goal of those same students to be professors, doctors, and leaders in their chosen disciplines.

DR. MELISSA SMITH, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, joined Clemson in 2006. She received her Ph.D. in 2003 in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Tennessee, where she specialized in performance modeling for high-performance computing systems. Prior to joining Clemson University, she was a research associate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Smith received the YMCA Stratford Award for Diversity and Inclusion in 2017.

Graduate student support has been Tonyia's focus since 2012. She began her journey with graduate students working in the graduate admissions office. In 2015, she became the Director of Graduate Recruitment and Inclusion, enabling her to advocate for STEM-focused students. Her creation of STEM ALL IN has engaged students from across the country, working to bring the best and brightest students on campus to learn about Clemson's graduate studies and STEM research. In 2017, Tonyia earned her master's in Student Affairs at Clemson. She hopes to help others discover their passion as researchers while creating opportunities to start their graduate education at Clemson University.

Since 2012 Andrew has supported students in engineering and science at Clemson University in various roles. Andrew possesses many professional skills and experiences with prior work in academic advising, undergraduate recruitment, student affairs, and industry partnerships. His research interests include the future of higher education, university-industry partnerships, experiences of part-time graduate students, and the policies and practices of land-grant institutions. An alumnus of Clemson University (’12, ’14, ’22), Andrew is as passionate about expanding access to higher education as he is about supporting student-athletes on the field.