When Dr. Kumea Shorter-Gooden took on her newly created job this month at the University of Maryland's flagship College Park campus, she assumed a challenge at the school with a lot riding on her shoulders--helping the University of Maryland strengthen its diversity efforts and, thus, its relevance to the state in the future and standing among the nation's major research and teaching institutions. As associate vice president and chief diversity officer at the College Park, Maryland, institution just outside the nation's capital, with 37,000 students and 10,000 employees, Shorter-Gooden will be Maryland President Wallace Loh's top aide in charge of giving day-to-day meaning to the school's ambitious 10-year strategic plan for diversity. A key element of Shorter-Gooden's charge will be helping Maryland develop, execute and sustain a solid plan for better recruitment and retention of tenured and tenure-track women and people of color. The new chief diversity officer will have a number of current programs reporting to her as part of her portfolio, creating the infrastructure for better coordination of various diversity efforts. She will be part of the university president's Cabinet, giving her ready access to the president and a voice in the decision-making process as ideas are being developed, discussed and debated. Shorter-Gooden also will have an identifiable stash of cash she can draw on to help deans and other department heads improve their diversity recruitment efforts. On a broad scale, Shorter-Gooden will have to help the university community decide whether a diversity structure built in the 1970s, one that was used when she was a graduate student at the school, will achieve what the school needs for the 21st century, a period during which society's collective vision of what constitutes diversity has gotten much broader than achieving racial goals. To prepare for the challenges, Shorter-Gooden says she first plans to do "lots of listening and learning" about what her new peers think works and what they think needs new, more enhanced or different attention.