Denise Bartell, PhD is a nationally-known expert on the student experience with over 25 years as both a university administrator and faculty member. Through her work she has led change at three regional public universities in the Midwest, collaborating with faculty, staff, students and administration to improve student experience and outcomes, via a focus on creating human-centered, relationship-focused conditions for learning, thriving and deep change. At the national level she has served as a thought leader and consultant with the Raikes Foundation, the University of Texas System, Bringing Theory to Practice, the Student Experience Project, the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), and the Student Education Research Network (SERN). She serves on the Editorial Board for Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning and has been a Board member for the National Resource Center for the First Year Experience. Over the course of her career she has secured over $1million in grant funding in support of student success efforts.
Denise’s scholarly and professional work focuses on taking a holistic, asset-focused approach to supporting student, faculty, and staff success and advocating for an increased valuing of the work of teaching in higher education. Her motivation for this work is a foundational belief in higher education as a public good to which all should have equal access. Her more recent work applies principles of relationship science and high impact learning experiences to reconceptualize professional development and institutional transformation.
Denise currently serves as a Professor of Multidisciplinary Social Sciences & Humanities at Kent State University, where she also coordinates their individualized, interdisciplinary Masters program. Her previous roles at Kent State include Associate Provost for Academic Affairs, where she supported institutional student success efforts and oversaw the Center for Teaching and Learning as well as Curriculum Services; and Senior Associate Vice President for Faculty & Student Success for the Regional System, where she spearheaded the launching of the Equity Champions program across Kent State’s seven regional campuses and led a redesign of the course schedule across the regional system to center the needs of the largely first generation, non-residential student population.
Prior to her work at Kent State Denise served as Associate Vice Provost for Student Success at the University of Toledo. There she created and launched the Equity Champions program as part of the first Student Experience Project funded by the Raikes Foundation and supported by APLU and the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU). She also led efforts to develop a university-wide structure to support retention in partnership with academic colleges and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; redesigned the first year experience and first year seminar courses; built data infrastructure to support student success efforts; and secured donor funding for a student debt forgiveness program.
Denise began her career in higher education at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay (UWGB), where she served as the Founding Director of Student Success & Engagement and as a professor of Human Development & Psychology. Over the course of 17 years at UWGB she developed the Gateways to Phoenix Success (GPS) program; co-created and led the institution’s first year seminar program; created peer mentoring programs and non-residential sophomore learning communities; collaborated on the redesign of the advising model and the creation of a professional development program for faculty advisors; developed an institutional early alert system working in collaboration with IT and the Office of Advising; and created emergency grant and campus meal donation programs working in collaboration with the Office of Financial Aid and Dining Services.
Denise earned a B.S. in Human Development & Family Studies from Cornell University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Human Development & Family Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin. She currently lives in Hudson, Ohio with her partner, Bill, and their quirky pets, Frita and Momma Cat.