Guest Bio

John is an educator, university professor and administrator, founder of two non-profit organizations, author, public speaker, consultant, public intellectual and thought leader, change agent, student retention specialist, first-year, sophomore, transfer, and senior year students’ advocate, initiator and scholar of multiple undergraduate education reform movements and…a continuing active participant in the unfinished civil rights movement. He serves as Founder and Executive Chair of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education. The Institute was founded by John and his wife, Betsy O. Barefoot, in October 1999 as the Policy Center on the First Year of College which was an outgrowth of their previous pioneering work at the University of South Carolina.