Dr. Kristen A. Renn - Closing Keynote

Dr. Kristen Renn is associate professor in the Higher, Adult, Lifelong Education (HALE) unit of the Department of Educational Administration at Michigan State University. She is a faculty member in the Student Affairs Administration master's program and teaches courses related to student development, diversity and equity, and higher education foundations in the HALE doctoral program and HALE master's program.
Dr. Renn's research interests include identity and identity development in higher education; mixed race college students; postsecondary race and ethnicity data policy; women in higher education; and issues related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in higher education. She is the author of Mixed Race Students in College: The Ecology of Race, Identity, and Community on Campus (2004). Dr. Renn received grants from the ACPA Educational Leadership Foundation and Professional Preparation Commission Faculty Research Grants program to support the National Study of New Professionals in Student Affairs, a longitudinal study of first-time, full-time professionals. She is the recipient of a 2005 Excellence in Teaching Award from the MSU College of Education and Principal Investigator/Coordinator of the 2006-2008 ASHE/Lumina Foundation for Education Fellowship Program. Dr. Renn is the Book Review Editor for Academe, bulletin of the AAUP, and was recently elected at-large member of the Board of Directors of the Association for the Study of Higher Education.

Prior to coming to MSU, Dr. Renn was assistant professor of higher education and qualitative research at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, a policy analyst for the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, and, for ten years, a dean in the Office of Student Life at Brown University. A Mount Holyoke College alumna, she received her PhD in higher education from Boston College.