KerryAnn O’Meara

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

KerryAnn O’Meara joined Fordham in July 2026 as the University’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs.

As the University’s chief academic officer, she is responsible for advancing Fordham’s academic mission supporting faculty and student success; working closely with deans, faculty, and University leaders to sustain the quality, relevance, and impact of academic programs; and ensuring that the values of scholarly excellence, ethical inquiry, and service remain central to Fordham’s Catholic, Jesuit identity. She collaborates to advance strategic plan objectives, with a particular emphasis on fostering partnerships to deepen the University’s strengths in STEM, Health and Applied Sciences. 

O’Meara earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Loyola University Maryland, where she now serves as a trustee; an M.Ed. in higher education from the Ohio State University; and a Ph.D. in educational policy from the University of Maryland. From 1999 to 2001, she held a research appointment in the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. O’Meara then served as a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she earned tenure, before joining the University of Maryland in 2007 as an associate professor. Over the next 16 years, she served in many academic roles at the university, including as professor of higher education, director of the ADVANCE program, and special assistant to the provost and president for strategic initiatives. She was honored by the university as a Distinguished Scholar Teacher. From 2023 to 2026, O’Meara served as provost and vice president for academic affairs at Teachers College, Columbia University.

O’Meara is widely recognized as a scholar specializing in academic careers and reward systems. She draws on insights from organizational behavior, higher education research, and behavioral economics to identify, test, and implement policies, practices, and interventions that embed transparency, clarity, credit, fairness, and context in faculty hiring, retention, workload, and evaluation policies and practices. Her work has been widely published, funded by the National Science Foundation, and shared with colleges and universities through research, reports, workshops, resources, and tools to create better places to work, learn, and thrive. In recognition of the rigor and impact of her scholarship and leadership, O’Meara was elected and served as president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education in 2020. She also was elected an American Council on Education Fellow in 2022 and inducted into the American Educational Research Association as a fellow in 2025.

She and her husband, Dan, live in Mamaroneck, New York, and are blessed with three daughters. She is the daughter of Richard O’Meara, a 1975 graduate of Fordham School of Law.