About

KerryAnn O’Meara is the Vice President for Academic Affairs, Provost, and Dean of the College at Teachers College Columbia University. She is a professor in the higher and postsecondary education program in the organization and leadership department. A recognized scholar on academic careers and reward systems, Provost O’Meara draws on insights from organizational behavior, higher education research, and behavioral economics to identify, test, and implement policies, practices, and interventions that embed transparency, clarity, credit, fairness and context in hiring, retention, workload and evaluation policies and practices.

O’Meara joined Teachers College in 2023 from the University of Maryland, where she served as Professor of Higher Education and a Distinguished Scholar Teacher, and as Special Assistant to the Provost and President for Strategic Initiatives. She served as Director of the University of Maryland ADVANCE program for ten years. She was elected and served as President of the Association for the Study of Higher Education in 2020, was elected as an American Council on Education Fellow in 2022 and inducted as an American Educational Research Association Fellow in 2025. Her work has been widely published, funded, and shared with colleges and universities through reports, workshops, resources, and tools to create more equitable workplaces.

KerryAnn has also held academic appointments at Harvard University Graduate School of Education and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her undergraduate degree from Loyola University Maryland where she now serves as a Trustee, an M.Ed. in Higher Education from Ohio State University and a Ph.D. in Education Policy from the University of Maryland.

Since becoming Provost in July 2023, Dr. O’Meara has collaborated with President Bailey, faculty, students, and staff to develop and launch the TC Commitments Vision and Action Plan. She worked collaboratively with TC faculty to strengthen academic programs through program analysis, making needed program modifications, launching new online programs, initiating TC’s first winter session in 2025, and launching TC Academy—a hub for innovative non-credit programs and micro-credentials. Provost O’Meara partnered with enrollment management and department chairs on financial aid reform, to centralize advising assignments, and initiated new signature initiatives that connect students across the College to interdisciplinary, real-world events and in the US and abroad. She worked closely with a taskforce and TC’s faculty executive committee to make important changes to titles, career ladders, recognition and promotion processes for professors of teaching. Animated by TC’s legacy of innovation and impact, she is working with colleagues to establish even stronger, mutually beneficial partnerships with other higher education institutions, alum, and global partners to advance our commitments to the public good.