Gesele Durham, PhD

Dr. Gesele Durham joined George Mason University in 2019 and serves as Vice Provost for Institutional Effectiveness and Planning. Her work, and the work of the OIEP team, spans the operations of the university, engaging colleagues in discussion about metrics needed for evaluation and assessment of practice, end-user focused data governance, assessment of student learning outcomes across the curriculum, co-curricular and academic program review, administrative assessment, official accountability reporting, strategic planning, and advanced statistical methods and modelling. OIEP also manages the administration of several university-wide tools including the student evaluations of teaching.    

Contributing to national conversations on the value and use of assessment and data informed decision-making, she has served as the secretary of the Executive Board for APLU’s Commission on Measurement, Information and Analysis and the board for the Voluntary System of Accountability. Engaged with EAB, Gesele served on the Product Advisory Councils for both the Navigate/Student Success Collaborative and the Academic Performance Solutions tool. She also was a member of the Peer Review Corp for the Higher Learning Commission and a mentor for HLC’s Persistence and Completion Academy. 

Immediately prior to joining Mason, Dr. Durham was the Vice Provost for Institutional Effectiveness at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. With a doctoral degree in political science from Binghamton University, her academic career has included serving as faculty at a prestigious, small, public, liberal arts institution, (University of Minnesota Morris), and administrative roles at both a Big 10 R1 institution (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and an urban, access R1 institution (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee). She also worked with the General Accounting Office in Washington, D.C. evaluating international environmental agreements.  

Originally from central Illinois, Dr. Durham attended Illinois State University for her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, both in political science. 

Education

PhD, Political Science, Binghamton University
MS, Political Science, Illinois State University
BS, Political Science, Illinois State University