KerryAnn O’Meara became Vice President for Academic Affairs, Provost and Dean of the College on July 5, 2023. She is a Professor in the Higher and Postsecondary Education Program in the Organization and Leadership Department.
KerryAnn’s scholarship focuses on creating a more diverse and inclusive academic workplace. She has designed, tested, and shared evidence-based strategies to remove barriers and improve full participation for women and scholars from racially minoritized groups with particular attention to faculty hiring, retention, workload and evaluation. Her work has been widely published and has received continuous funding from the National Science Foundation since 2010.
Prior to joining Teachers College, KerryAnn served as Professor of Higher Education, Distinguished Scholar Teacher, and Special Assistant to the Provost for Strategic Initiatives at the University of Maryland (UMD). KerryAnn draws on insights from organizational behavior, higher education research, and behavioral economics to identify and test policies, practices, and interventions to recruit, retain and advance a diverse faculty. She served as Director of UMD’s ADVANCE program for ten years, designing evidence-based interventions that resulted in documented improvements in the hiring, professional growth, retention and advancement of diverse faculty, and improved workload equity in academic departments in three state systems.
KerryAnn also served as Associate Dean of Faculty and Graduate Affairs at UMD College of Education, as well as Assistant to the President for Strategic Initiatives. She developed campus-wide DEI onboarding now experienced by more than 30,000 members of the and led implementation of UMD’s strategic plan. She was a 2021-2022 American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow, and was elected and served as President of the Association for the Study of Higher Education in 2020.
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, an M.Ed. in Higher Education from The Ohio State University and a Ph.D. in Educational Policy from the University of Maryland.