Nia Haydel

As the Vice President for Alliance Engagement and Institutional Transformation at Complete College America (CCA), Dr. Haydel provides leadership on initiatives focusing on strengthening partnerships with CCA's 49 alliance members, developing strategies to build on existing college completion policy initiatives, and conceptualizing CCA’s work around institutional transformation. She also serves as the project lead for the partnership with the Gates Foundations on the Intermediaries for Scale Initiative. Prior to her current position, she dedicated over 20 years on college campuses envisioning, planning, and executing strategic initiatives designed to elevate the student experience through tenures in Academic Affairs, Enrollment Management, Intercultural Relations, and Student Affairs as both a faculty member and administrator.

While at Dillard University, she served as the inaugural Dean for University College and the Director of the Thompson/Cook Honors Program. In this position, Dr. Haydel led the institution’s retention and student success initiatives as the Chief Retention Officer, created a first-year experience program, redesigned the academic advising model to complement a new learning community framework, and oversaw the implementation of the institution’s predictive analytics platform. She secured over $1.5M in grants to support student success initiatives. During her tenure at Georgia State University, she directed the first-year experience program and led the launch of the acclaimed Panther Retention grant, which has served as a national model for higher education emergency aid programs. She led the first Intercultural Relations Program for the Division of Student Affairs creating a model for intercultural relations and instituting the first cross-cultural dialogue program for the institution. She also held roles at Texas A&M University and Oxford College of Emory University in Residence Life and Diversity Programs.

Her diverse experiences have influenced her commitment to crafting learning environments that address the holistic needs of students thereby increasing their propensity for success particularly for populations who have been excluded from full participation in higher education. She has developed a particular interest in identifying strategies to improve the PK-16 pipeline and incorporating families in this process. Dr. Haydel’s research interests are in the areas of social justice and education specifically focusing on power and privilege, and the responsibility of higher education to educate the community on social injustice (higher education as a public good). She earned a B.S. in Psychology from the University of New Orleans, M.S. in Higher Education Administration from Texas A & M University, and a Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies from Georgia State University. She resides in New Orleans, LA with her husband, Chase, and has 3 children, Issis, Chase, and Noelle.