Dayo Mitchell

Bio

Dayo Nicole Mitchell is a Senior Associate Director with Stanford Introductory Studies (SIS), under the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE). She is the program director for Sophomore College (SoCo) and also works on projects for the VPUE organization as a whole. Sophomore College is a three-week residential program in the September intersession focusing on experiential learning beyond the classroom, offering 16-20 classes each year. Rising sophomores concentrate on a single class in a living-learning format for three weeks.

Dayo came to SIS in 2017, and in addition to working with Sophomore College, was also associate director for Introductory Seminars from 2017 to 2020, and then associate director for the first-year requirement from 2020 to 2025 (first Thinking Matters, then Civic, Liberal, and Global Education). Before moving to SIS in 2017, Dayo served as an Academic Advising Director with Undergraduate Advising and Research (UAR, now Academic Advising), helping students of all majors and classes navigate Stanford. Her focused projects as an advisor included working on advising websites, academic skills coaching, honors theses, and the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship.

Dayo arrived at Stanford in 2011, after several years as faculty in the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. While at the honors college, she developed experience with university admissions, undergraduate research, and diversity, equity, and inclusion work, as well as doing general advising for honors college students across all majors and schools. Dayo is trained as a historian of slavery and the British empire in the Caribbean and taught courses in world history and the history of the Atlantic world. Her research focused on the politics of race and citizenship in the nineteenth-century. She has lived in California, New England, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Oregon, with extended stays abroad in England and Trinidad & Tobago. Her name is pronounced "DAH-yo", not "day-oh".

Current Role at Stanford

Senior Associate Director Sophomore College and Special Assistant to the VP--Stanford Introductory Studies

Education & Certifications

• PhD, University of Virginia, History (2005)
• MA, University of Virginia, History (1999)
• BA, Williams College, History (1997)