Professor Adrianna Kezar has been named co-director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at USC Rossier, where she has served as associate director since 2003. Kezar is an expert in leadership and change in higher education and is widely cited for her research on non-tenure track faculty.
She now heads the Pullias Center with Professor William G. Tierney, who had directed the center since it was founded in 1994.
“I cannot think of a more highly visible and well-regarded colleague to help me lead the Pullias Center,” Tierney said of Kezar’s new role at the center.
Kezar was officially announced as co-director at the 35th Annual Pullias Lecture, which delivered by Nancy Zimpher, chancellor of the State University of New York (SUNY), on February 4.
Kezar currently directs the Delphi Project on Changing Faculty and Student Success, which brings experts together to examine and develop solutions to change the nature of the professoriate, the causes of the rise of non-tenure-track faculty, and the impact of this change on teaching and learning environments. More about the Delphi Project
She is published extensively, with 14 books, more than 75 journal articles and more than a hundred book chapters and reports. She has a National Science Foundation grant for nearly $700,000 to study undergraduate STEM reform networks that are effectively spreading innovation in higher education. More about Kezar’s STEM reform project.
Kezar has served on a number of editorial boards, including The Journal of Higher Education, The Journal of College Student Development, Change, and The ERIC Review, and she has played major leadership roles serving on the American Educational Research Association (AERA)-Division J Council and the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) Board, Publication Committee and Dissertation of the Year Committee.
The Earl and Pauline Pullias Center for Higher Education is an interdisciplinary research center established to engage the postsecondary education community actively, and to serve as an important intellectual center within the USC Rossier School of Education.
