Jacquelyn R. Jones, Assistant
Vice President for Student Success
Jacquelyn R. Jones is the Assistant Vice President for Student Success where she provides strategic vision and leadership for developing and contributing to the student success strategy work in the Center for Student Success and the Frontier Set. Understanding and contributing knowledge on institutional transformation and accelerating progress of near-term indicators for AASCU’s Frontier Set campuses is critical to her role. Jacquelyn also serves as the connection bridge for learning across the segment and up through the Frontier Set network through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, providing support to AASCU and supporting student success nationally. Prior to working at AASCU, Jacquelyn worked at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she served as the Director of Retention Initiatives working to increase retention and completion rates, as well as improving the student success platform on campus. She has worked in both academic and student affairs and has extensive experience establishing rapport and cultivating relationships with campus stakeholders. Jacquelyn, originally from the Cleveland, Ohio area is a first generation college student and the first in her family to receive a Ph.D. Jacquelyn earned her Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from The University of Toledo, her M.S. in Higher Education Administration from The University of Akron, and her B.S. in Sport and Exercise Science with a concentration in Sports Management from The University of Akron.
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Lynn Brabender, Director, Student Success and Service Provision
Lynn Brabender is Director of Student Success and Service Provision. Before joining AASCU, she served as Associate Director for the Center for Public University Transformation at APLU, where she has worked since 2016. She has previous experience in higher education at the Charles A. Dana Center at UT Austin. She has also worked with higher education leadership, state policy makers, institutions, and practitioners across 19 states to align K-12 and higher education college readiness standards and assessments to support successful postsecondary transitions. She has earned a Master’s degree in Public Affairs from the LBJ School at the University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor’s of Philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder. |
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Melissa Rivas, Director, Student Success and Coaching
Melissa Rivas is the Director of Student Success and Coaching. currently serving as Associate Director for the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities at APLU, where she has worked since 2018 supporting the success of low-income, minoritized, first-generation and transfer students. She has previous experience in higher education, including work at Excelencia. She has worked directly with first-generation, low-income students of color in San Francisco and Oakland, California. At uAspire, she helped students navigate the complicated financial aid process, guiding students through the FAFSA, CA Dream Act, CSS Profile verification forms, and more. She has earned a Master’s degree in Higher Education Student Affairs, and International Education Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology with a minor in Education from the University of California, Berkeley. |
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Melissa A. Welker, Director, AASCU’s Frontier Set
Melissa A. Welker is the Director of AASCU’s Frontier Set (FS), where she provides leadership and manages 6 institutional portfolios focused on the development and discovery of new knowledge, models, practices and tools that have the potential to dramatically improve specific student learning and life outcomes. She provides critical capacity support by providing the programmatic, logistical, operational, and strategic assistance needed to meet our institutions where they are at with a focus on institutional transformation and student success. Prior to working at AASCU, Melissa served as the Executive Director of Student Success Programs and Initiatives at Northern Arizona University since 2015, where she led various programs and facilitated the development of university wide initiatives intended to bolster student success across the university. Prior to her last position, Melissa has had the opportunity to develop and implement peer mentoring programs, build bridges between academic and student affairs, harness data and insights to develop initiatives, work in the academic advising realm and participate in institutional transformation. Melissa is passionate about the connection between social justice and education which grounds her work in advocating for students to have the best opportunities for learning and growth, both within higher education and in the community she lives. Melissa earned her M.S. in Education with an emphasis in Counseling and Student Affairs from Northern Arizona University, and her B.S. in Business Administration, with an emphasis in Marketing from the University of Northern Colorado. |
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Nyala Watkins, Program Manager, Student Success
Nyala Watkins is a Program Manager of Student Success for AASCU’s Academic Leadership and Change Division. She works with the
Re-Imagining the First Year of College (RFY) and
Frontier Set (FS) initiatives. Prior to this role, Nyala was the Senior Program Advisor for AASCU’s Grants Resource Center. She earned her B.A. in Sociology and Speech Communication from Syracuse University. |
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Randy Bumpers , Experience Designer, Academic
Innovation and Transformation
Randy Bumpers earned his Master of Science in Instructional Design and Development from the University of South Alabama. While in graduate school, he trained faculty in online and blended learning pedagogy as an instructional design graduate assistant at the Innovation
in Learning Center. He is also a member of the 2018 Class of the Harvard National Institute of Urban School Leaders. He began advocating for educational equity after facing the challenges of a minority, first generation college student. Randy is co-founder of the Giving Access to the People (GAP) Project, an educational program that aims to enhance the quality of life for all youth. He is a member of the Association of Education, Communication and Technology, where he serves on the board for the division of Culture, Learning, and Technology. Bumpers’ philosophy of learning design is that every learner can be reached if you meet them where they are. |
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Prateek Basavaraj, Research Analyst, Student Success Initiatives
Prateek Basavaraj joins the AASCU Student Success team as the Research Analyst. Prior to joining AASCU, he served as Graduate Research Assistant at the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando, Florida. He worked on the student success project as part of the Targeted Educational Attainment grant sponsored by the Florida legislature to improve the graduation rates of undergraduate computing programs at UCF. Prior to his last position, Prateek has worked as a research technician at the UCF Office of Research and Commercialization.
His research expertise lies in academic analytics, institutional research, and program quality improvement. Prateek has worked on several projects studying the STEM program curriculum, quality enhancement of computing programs to improve student success. Prateek has published and presented at national and international level conferences. He served as a reviewer for academic journals and conferences. Prateek earned his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from UCF with an emphasis in the area of higher education data analytics, his M.S. in Computer Science from UCF, and his B.S. in Computer Science from Kuvempu University, India.
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