Dedric Carter, associate provost and associate vice chancellor for innovation and entrepreneurship and professor of engineering practice at Washington University in St. Louis, has been appointed vice chancellor for operations and technology transfer, effective July 1, according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton.
“Dedric has served with great distinction in each of his roles,” Wrighton said. “He has greatly improved our programs in all areas of technology transfer and has been a major contributor to the great success of the Cortex Innovation Community. I am grateful to him for his willingness to expand his portfolio of responsibilities in service to the university.”
Carter was appointed in 2014 to the innovation and entrepreneurship post, in which he has served as a catalyst for cross-university initiatives and facilitated connections with members of the entrepreneurial community on the local, regional, national and global level to promote and facilitate engagement with the university. He oversees the Office of Technology Management and the university’s technology transfer function, and he is a key university liaison to Cortex, a collaboration between Washington University, Saint Louis University, BJC HealthCare, the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the Missouri Botanical Garden that is developing 187 acres in the Central West End of St. Louis into one of the nation’s leading research districts.
In his new position, Carter will retain his current leadership roles and take on additional responsibility for a number of areas of operation for the university, including dining and food services, campus card services, Whittemore House, parking and transportation, summer programs and conferences, resource management, and environmental health and safety. He will report to Provost Holden Thorp for technology transfer and Henry S. Webber, executive vice chancellor for administration, for his other duties.
“Dedric has proven himself to be a highly skilled, unifying leader,” Webber said. “His new role will enable him to have an even greater impact on university operations, building on the success of the excellent work already being done by our outstanding teams in these essential areas.”
“It is always gratifying to reward good people for good work,” Thorp said. “Dedric has gone above and beyond in many ways and we could not be more pleased that he has agreed to take on this new suite of responsibilities. His leadership in the areas of innovation and entrepreneurship have clearly demonstrated that there is no one better suited for the management of mission-critical functions of the university.”
“It is an honor to have the unique opportunity to impact the university through this appointment,” Carter said. “In new and established ventures, execution risks are key and important factors. With the start of Campus Next and other new initiatives, our prospects are boundless to continue to excel in university operations and to build upon our work in innovation and entrepreneurship through technology transfer.”
Prior to joining the Washington University administration and faculty, Carter served as senior adviser for strategic initiatives in the Office of the Director at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), where he was a co-founder of the NSF Innovation Corps program and the architect of the program’s initial public-private partnership model. Prior to his work at NSF, he had served as assistant dean of engineering for development and strategic initiatives and lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In this capacity, he served as the first executive director of MIT’s Office of Engineering Outreach Programs.
Carter earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, in addition to a master of business administration degree from MIT Sloan. He earned his doctorate in information systems from Nova Southeastern University.
Dedric and his wife, Ebony Carter, MD, MPH, live with their two young daughters Zari and Nia on the South 40 as Faculty Fellows in Wayman Crow Residential College.