Mark Salisbury is assistant dean of academic affairs and director of institutional research and assessment at Augustana College. His research on college impact has been featured by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and NPR. Prior to his time at Augustana College, Mark was a researcher with the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education and a Teagle Scholar. He earned his PhD from the University of Iowa. He also maintains a weekly blog titled “Delicious Ambiguity” (www.augustana.edu/blogs/ir) that explores how an institution can use evidence to improve.
Tanya has over two decades of comprehensive higher education fundraising and campaign experience, including serving in her new role as vice president for university advancement at California State University, East Bay. Previously, she served as vice president at Mills College, an institution that received CASE’s 2014 educational award for overall performance, and as associate vice president of development at Cal Poly, where she worked her way up the ranks over a fifteen-year career at the university. Tanya is highly regarded as a principle gift strategist and has personally raised more than $80 million. She is known as a champion for deepening the engagement of internal stakeholders across the academy in garnering private gift support. Throughout her career she has served as a key member of numerous deans’ and presidential leadership teams successfully engaging them in three comprehensive, institutional campaigns and numerous mission-focused college, department, and center initiatives. As an advocate for celebrating the importance of faculty hands-on engagement, she has been recognized as the creator of the Provost’s Leadership Award for Partnership in Philanthropy at Cal Poly.
John Finke has more than 35 years’ experience in local government, nonprofit management, private sector development, and financing public private partnerships. John pioneered the American Model Approach and has used that model to finance and develop more than 1,600,000 square feet of government and university offices, 750,000 square feet of medical offices, 400,000 square feet of research laboratories, 2,500 spaces of structured parking facilities for public institutions and 1,100 units of student housing. These award-winning projects total more than $2 Billion in direct development costs.
Dr. Anu Vedantham has served as the Director of the Weigle Information Commons at the Penn Libraries since 2007. She came to Penn from the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey where she directed the Southern Regional Institute and Educational Technology Training Center (ETTC) for six years providing professional development for K-12 teachers. At Stockton, she also served as interim associate provost and as director of instructional technology. Her research on global warming has been recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a significant contribution to the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. She served for two years as director of grants and community initiatives at Stafford Township school district. In the mid-90s, she served as program officer at the telecommunications opportunities program at the United States Department of Commerce. She holds a doctorate in higher education management from Penn’s Graduate School of Education, a New Jersey Principal Certificate, a masters in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and her bachelors and masters in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Joe Fennewald joined the Penn State University libraries in 2000 and has served as the head of its Knowledge Commons since that facility opened in January 2012. From his glass-walled office, located in the heart of this popular space, he has developed an unrivalled knowledge of how students are using these commons. He is working now with several collaborators to extend that knowledge in a systematic study of the impact of this informal learning space on student academic success. Joe has published in leading library journals and regularly presents at regional, national and international conferences. He is a member of the ALA, ACRL and PA Library Association; he served as president of the last in 2009. In the fall of 2007 he visited academic libraries in Tianjin, China while on sabbatical leave that academic year. In 2009-10 he was a Penn State Fellow in the Academic Leadership Program of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. He holds an MLS from the University of Missouri.
In her current position, Meg (@msteverb) is always looking for the most creative way to tell St. Lawrence University’s story. She manages St. Lawrence’s presences on social media sites and serves as a campus-wide social media strategist for offices, departments, and organizations that are interested in learning how to achieve their goals using social media and digital content. She is also a content strategist and writer for various publications on campus, including the St. Lawrence magazine and the university’s admissions publications.
Over the past six years, John has been responsible for developing various aspects of the public private partnership with Marshall University and Capstone on-Campus Management. Prior to joining Marshall University, John held senior leadership positions at the University of Massachusetts, Louisiana State University, and the University of Miami and has been at Marshall University since 2009. He has collaborated on manuscripts for ACUHO-I, NASPA, and the American Association of Community Colleges. John holds a Master of Arts from Louisiana State University and recently completed his doctorate in Educational Leadership from Marshall University in 2013.
As manager of educational operations, Bruce is responsible for managing major education projects within the VP Academic portfolio. Working with key stakeholders, Bruce has developed a comprehensive data-driven plan to transform space use at BCIT’s five campuses. Previously, Bruce held the role of manager of institute planning, developing a five-year strategic plan, designing models of engagement and accountability for the plan’s implementation, and creating an integrated framework that included operational, budget and capital planning. Bruce has chaired several Institute committees including the operational planning steering committee, the strategic planning council and the space management working group.
Mike came to S&K in April of 2014 from Bryan College, where he most recently served as vice president of enrollment management. He initially began at Bryan as financial aid director in 2004 before assuming responsibility for traditional undergraduate recruitment in addition to financial aid in 2005. Under his leadership, Bryan experienced significant growth in the traditional program, ultimately achieving record new student and total enrollment. As vice president, he also oversaw the Office of Student Life. Prior to his time at Bryan, Mike served as assistant financial aid director at Tennessee Temple University, and, before beginning in higher education, worked in sales and marketing. Mike earned a BS in financial management from Franklin Pierce University and an MA in Communication from Spring Arbor University. His capstone project examined the use of social media in college recruitment.
Dr. Mary M. Somerville brings years of fundraising and library renovation experience from two major campus projects including her current position as University Librarian since 2016 for University Libraries at University of the Pacific—one university with campuses in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Stockton, California. There she is currently advancing a comprehensive library facility renovation, her second. From 2008 – 2015, she was furthering fundraising and vision-setting for design and construction of the Auraria Library, a shared facility academic library serving University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and Community College of Denver.
