Dean of Academic Affairs; Professor of Psychology
Jennifer Fredericks is Dean of Academic Programs and Departments at Union College. Prior to working at Union, she was a professor of human development at Connecticut College, where she also served as the faculty director of the Holleran Center for Community Action and Public Policy. Fredricks has published more than 50 articles and book chapters on student engagement, adolescent development, extracurricular participation and parent socialization in top-tiered educational and developmental journals. She is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences and has run several workshops on engaged and student-centered pedagogy. She is the author of the book “Eight Myths of Student Disengagement: Creating Classrooms of Deep Learning.” She has received grants from the National Science Foundation, Spencer Foundation, American Educational Research Association and the Institute for Educational Studies. In 2016, Fredricks was awarded a Students at the Center Distinguished Fellowship from Jobs for the Future to expand on the knowledge of student-centered learning and to communicate these to practitioners and policymakers. And in 2015, Fredricks was a recipient of a William T. Grant Distinguished Fellowship to deepen her understanding of educational policymaking through a long-term residency at a Connecticut legislative and advocacy organization. Fredricks received her bachelor’s in psychology (with an economic concentration) from Columbia University, and a master’s in developmental psychology and Ph.D. in the combined program in education and psychology, both from the University at Michigan.