Academy of Community Engagement Scholarship (ACES)

Jorge Horacio Atiles

Inducted in
2025

West Virginia University

Associate Vice President, Division for Land-Grant Engagement

Dean and Director

Photo of Jorge Horacio Atiles

Biographical Abstracts

Jorge H. Atiles is associate vice president and dean of the Division for Land-Grant Engagement at West Virginia University (WVU). The division includes three distinct units: the WVU Center for Community Engagement, WVU Extension, and the Davis College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. As a land-grant partner to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Dr. Atiles also serves as director for the WVU Cooperative Extension Service and the West Virginia Agriculture and Forestry Experiment Station. In these roles, he oversees the successful implementation and impact of these Extension and research programs across West Virginia’s 55 counties.

Atiles represents WVU as the institutional member of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) Council on Economic and Community Engagement and the Academic Heads and Cooperative Extension Sections of the Board on Agricultural Assembly. Similarly, he serves as an institutional representative on the board of the Engagement Scholarship Consortium. He co-chairs the National Forum for Engagement and Outreach Administrators and was inducted in July 2025 into the Academy of Community Engagement Scholarship.

Before coming to WVU, Atiles served as associate dean for Extension & Engagement at Oklahoma State University. Until 2010, he was associate dean for Extension and Outreach at the University of Georgia.

Atiles holds a Ph.D. in housing, interior design, and resource Management and a master’s degree in urban and regional planning, both from Virginia Tech. He earned a bachelor's degree in architecture from the Universidad Nacional Pedro Henriquez Ureña, Dominican Republic.

Before joining academia, Atiles worked in local government, managing federally funded housing programs for the Unified Government of Athens-Clarke County, Georgia. He also worked in the banking industry with the Dominican Republic’s National Housing Bank.

Areas of Expertise

  • Housing
  • Residential health, energy, water, and waste
  • Community engagement competencies