Empowering Colleges and Universities to Achieve More

Dr. Jessica Rowland Williams currently serves at the Senior Director of Client Service Delivery of the National Institute for Student Success (NISS) at Georgia State University where she oversees the end-to-end delivery of services to clients and the continued development of cutting-edge student success solutions. She also manages a team of program advisors, who provide best-in-class consulting services to institutions by leveraging content experts and product innovations that sit at the forefront of student success. Jessica previously served as the Director of Every Learner Everywhere, a network of organizations with a mission to help institutions use new technology to innovate teaching and learning to support student success. As Director, she provided leadership and vision for the network and lead the operation of the network strategy. Prior to this role, Jessica served as the Completion Grant Initiative Project Director for University Innovation Alliance. She also worked as Project Director in Georgia State University’s Office of the Senior Vice President of Student Success. Jessica earned her bachelor’s degree in Biology from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia and earned both her M.A. and Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University. During her time at Princeton University, Jessica served four years as a Diversity Fellow in the Office of Academic Affairs and Diversity and was honored with the Patrice Y. Johnson *80 Memorial Service Award by the Association of Black Princeton Alumni in recognition of her high levels of performance and service to the university. Jessica has devoted her career to helping institutions better serve marginalized students.

On November 1, 2020, Dr. Timothy Renick became Founding Executive Director of Georgia State University’s new National Institute for Student Success. Immediately before this transition, Dr. Renick served as Senior Vice President for Student Success and Professor of Religious Studies.

Since 2008, Dr. Renick has led strategies, initiatives and programs that have established Georgia State as an internationally recognized leader in student success and enrollment efforts. Under Dr. Renick’s leadership, Georgia State has produced one of the fastest growing graduation rates in the nation and has eliminated achievement gaps based on students’ race, ethnicity and income levels.

Dr. Renick has testified on strategies for helping university students succeed before the U. S. Senate and has twice been invited to speak at the White House. His work has been cited by President Barack Obama and has been covered by national news media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time and CNN.

Dr. Renick was named one of 2016’s Most Innovative People in Higher Education by Washington Monthly, was the recipient of the 2015-16 Award for National Leadership in Student Success Innovation and was awarded the 2018 McGraw Prize in Higher Education. Dr. Renick is principal investigator for a $9 million U.S. Department of Education grant to study the impact of predictive-analytics-based advisement on 10,000 low-income and first-generation students nationally.

He has previously served as Chair of the Department of Religious Studies and Director of the Honors Program. A summa cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, Dr. Renick holds master’s and doctor’s degrees in religion from Princeton University.

As Director of Partnerships and Client Engagement, Ryan manages the organization’s client development opportunities across all sectors of higher education to engage in NISS high-touch consulting services. In addition, he oversees employee development, hiring processes, training and professional development, and he supports the management of the NISS grant portfolio’s operational funding.

Dr. Angela Christie oversees the development of the NISS’s accelerator and implementation pathway courses. She leads the team responsible for website design, platform implementation, marketing and branding and technical writing, and content development. Dr. Christie also designs deliverable solutions for NISS clients , serves as the Faculty Director of GSU’s College to Career program, and is the NISS subject matter expert in the area. Dr. Christie was selected as the faculty director of the next Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP): College to Career: Career Readiness through Everyday Competencies in fall 2018. College to Career is a university-wide initiative that will increase students’ ability to recognize and demonstrate the career competencies they are learning through their curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular experiences. As faculty director, Dr. Christie oversees the development, refinement and implementation of College to Career and works with units and personnel across the university. She is working with departments to design their plans for QEP participation, conducting periodic surveys and assessments to measure the QEP’s success, and planning activities to raise faculty and student awareness about the QEP on all campuses. A  principal senior lecturer on the Atlanta Campus in the Department of English, Dr. Christie has been the associate director of Lower Division Studies since 2007. In that capacity, she has mentored graduate teaching assistants, edited the university’s Guide to First-Year Writing, served as the assessment reporter for the department’s core courses and developed paired-instructor courses for the College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Christie has led her department in developing college-to-career assignments, curricula and pedagogical practices in core courses and the major.

Ben generates insights from data to positively impact the outcomes and experiences of Georgia State students. He has served in research and analytics roles at Georgia State for over a decade and leads a team responsible for the management and evaluation of a wide portfolio of Student Success programs, including the administration of Georgia State’s chatbot to more than 30,000 undergraduate students. Ben has lead research and analytics initiatives funded by the U.S. Department of Education, The Kresge Foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and The Pew Charitable Trusts. A native of Atlanta, Ben holds a bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science from the University of Georgia, a master’s in Economics from Georgia State University, and a master’s in Analytics from Georgia Tech.