NEW ORLEANS — Tania Tetlow had a successful stint as a lawyer and federal prosecutor before she embarked on a teaching career as a law professor at Tulane University.
After moving up the ranks to become the university’s chief of staff, Tetlow is making history with her recent appointment as the first woman and first lay person appointed president of Loyola University New Orleans, the private Jesuit University founded in 1904.
“I’ve been joking that I think the Jesuits in my family may have been secretly plotting to train me for this job without actually telling me about it,” says Tetlow, who hails from a family with deep ties in the Catholic church. Her father was a former Jesuit priest and psychology professor at Loyola and her mother also taught at Loyola before she earned her law degree at the university. Tetlow’s grandfather also attended the university and her uncle, Joseph Tetlow, was the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for many years.
Now, at 46, Tetlow has been handed the mantle of a university that is more diverse than others. About 30 percent of its students are first-generation and 39 percent are students of color.
“What I love about universities and what makes me so excited about being here doing this, is that they are a driver of opportunity at their best,” says Tetlow, who officially takes the helm in September. “They are places that bring people together at their crucial moment in their development from across all kinds of difference and gives them a chance to learn and grow and understand each other better.”
Tetlow’s background in diversity and inclusion is impressive. Outside of teaching and writing about race and the U.S. Constitution, she co-chaired Tulane’s Presidential Commission on Race and Tulane Values that focused on changing campus culture and examining everything from student life and admissions to faculty hiring and retention at the largest private employer in New Orleans. She also spearheaded a campus climate survey on sexual violence.
“These issues of race and gender and ethnicity have been primary to what I’ve cared about and worked on,” says Tetlow, who understands the symbolism attached to her being the first woman and first non-Jesuit to lead the institution.
