Executive Director

Academic Advising Enrichment, Undergraduate Education

Kayton Carter, MA was named as Executive Director for Academic Advising Enrichment at UC Davis in 2021. A unit of Undergraduate Education, Academic Advising Enrichment was established in 2014 to strengthen the UC Davis student experience by providing centralized, campus-wide leadership and advocacy for academic advising.

Carter has served as Executive Director of UC Davis’ three retention centers and four retention initiatives, which support African diaspora, Asian Pacific Islander, Chicanx and Latinx, and Native American students. He directed the African American Strategic Retention Initiative, the campus’ first retention initiative targeting under-represented student populations, and was founding director of the Center for African Diaspora Student Success, UC Davis’ first Black student retention center. He also serves on the advisory board for the Beyond the Barriers initiative for system impacted and formerly incarcerated students.

Carter's approach to fostering student success through advising is informed by a wealth of perspective: a first-generation, system-impacted transfer student and former college athlete, he attended multiple community colleges before earning his BA in interdisciplinary studies from UC Berkeley in 1994, and his MA in Higher Education Administration from Michigan State University in 1998. He is completing his doctoral degree at the UC Davis School of Education, where his research focus is Black male retention and graduation at UC Davis.