Jennifer R. Keup to Start as USU Executive Director & VP for APLU’s Office of Urban Initiatives September 1

Dr. Jennifer R. Keup has been selected as the next Executive Director of USU and Vice President of the APLU Office of Urban Initiatives. She starts September 1.

Since 2008, Keup has served as Executive Director of the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, providing leadership for the organization’s operational, strategic, and scholarly activities in pursuit of its mission to support and advance efforts to improve student learning and transitions into and through higher education.

Her strong leadership of an organization that aligns so well with the focus of USU member institutions, coupled with experience in the programmatic areas we prioritized, makes her a great fit to lead USU.
Under her leadership, the National Resource Center has provided opportunities for the exchange of practical and scholarly information, as well as the discussion of trends and issues in the field though the convening of conferences and professional development events while producing a flurry of publications and pursuing an original research agenda.

During her tenure, Keup has also worked to spearhead the Center’s national and international collaboration and partnerships, thought leadership, advancement of publication and professional development outlets, grant acquisition, service development and delivery, and expansion of channels for resource sharing and communication, including online and social media. She also serves as an affiliate faculty member in educational leadership and policies in the College of Education at the University of South Carolina.

Prior to coming to the Center, Keup held positions as the Director of the Student Affairs Information and Research Office at UCLA and the Director of Follow-up Surveys for the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) at the Higher Education Research Institute. She is a proud three-time alum of UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a masters and Ph.D. in higher education and organizational change.