Provost Jeffords is pleased to announce Erica Wagner as the new Vice Provost for Student Success in Academic Affairs. In this role, Erica will take a lead role in the Students First Initiative and will oversee key offices that are critical to student success, including Advising and Career Services, the Office of Student Success, and the Transfer and Returning Student Center.
Erica Wagner is currently a Professor of Management and the Associate Dean of undergraduate programs in the School of Business. She earned her Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and has an undergraduate degree in accounting. Before coming to PSU in 2009, she taught at Cornell University and The London School of Economics.
While her scholarly and research interests have focused on ways software is 'made to work' within organizations, her most recent research has focused on student success. In 2019, along with co-authors, she published a peer-reviewed article on the impacts of hardship funds on student retention. During her sabbatical, she is conducting an in-depth qualitative study of the impact that additional social identity categories such as gender identity, sexual orientation, and pronouns have within PSU’s information systems for increasing experiences of inclusion and belonging.
While serving as Associate Dean in the School of Business, Erica led a number of initiatives that impacted student success including helping to develop the first DEI dean-level leadership action plan, creating a fully online degree pathway program with community colleges and PSU departments allowing students to earn a B.A./B.S. in business by either beginning online at Mt Hood, PCC, or PSU, creating and launching a financial hardship program with undergraduate staff that has disbursed over $1.4 million to students in jeopardy of dropping out due to financial struggles where recipients have an 88% retention or graduation rate, and increasing First Time Full-Time (FTFT) retention rate for School of Business undergraduates by 5.1% and new transfer student retention for the 2020 cohort by 3.6% to 86.4%.
Erica describes her leadership style as one of collaboration, equity, and transparency. She is committed to listening to people with direct knowledge of the context and ideas about how to solve difficult issues. I know she looks forward to listening to the many of you across PSU who are committed to engaging our Student Success efforts and taking action from a place of informed understanding.
Erica was identified after a robust campus search process that was ably led by Yves Labisierre, Professor in SPH, and Michele Toppe, Vice Provost for Student Affairs. The Provost would like to acknowledge the committee members listed below who assisted with this process. Erica formally begins her role on September 1, but will start part-time this summer while she completes her sabbatical research.
Vice Provost for Student Success Search Committee