To: OSU Faculty and Staff
From: Edward Feser, Provost and Executive Vice President
February 8, 2021
Dear Oregon State Colleagues:
It is my pleasure to announce the appointment of Dr. Susan Gardner as Oregon State University’s Dean of the College of Education, effective on Feb. 28.
Dr. Gardner is professor of Higher Education at the University of Maine (UMaine). She began her faculty career at Louisiana State University in 2005 and moved to UMaine in 2007, where she earned tenure in 2010 and was promoted to professor in 2015. She has served as director of a $3.3 million National Science Foundation ADVANCE grant on faculty recruitment, retention and advancement; director of UMaine’s Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program; director of the Rising Tide Center serving equity and inclusion; Associate Dean of Accreditation and Graduate Affairs in the College of Education and Human Development; and interim dean.
Dr. Gardner comes to the field of education with a wide variety of experiences. As a first-generation college student, she graduated with her bachelor’s degree in education and Spanish from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1996. She worked as a high school Spanish teacher in Wisconsin while also earning her master’s degree in education from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. In 2001, she began work as a student affairs administrator at Washington State University, where she simultaneously completed her Ph.D. in Higher Education in 2005. In all of these experiences, she maintained a strong focus on equity and inclusion in education.
Dr. Gardner’s scholarship focuses on individual success within the organizational environments of higher education. She is the author of over 60 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and books on doctoral student socialization and development, interdisciplinarity, and the retention and advancement of women faculty. She has also served as principal investigator, co-principal investigator and major personnel on grants from the National Science Foundation and the Sloan Foundation totaling nearly $24 million.
Please join me in welcoming Dr. Gardner to Oregon State and thanking Dr. Toni Doolen for serving with great distinction as Dean of the College of Education since summer 2017. I appreciate her highly effective leadership and dedicated service to OSU. Dr. Doolen also serves as the Dean of the Honors College and will continue in that role.
Edward Feser
Provost and Executive Vice President