About
Shanna Smith Jaggars is the Assistant Vice Provost and directs the Student Success Research Lab at The Ohio State University, where she leads both qualitative and quantitative research projects focused on academic support programs, patterns of student academic progression, and instructional improvement initiatives. Before transitioning to the Student Success Research Lab, she was the Director of Student Success Research for the Office of Distance Education and E-Learning. Previously, Dr. Jaggars was Assistant Director of the Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, where her research focused on developmental education programming and policy, student advising and tracking systems, online learning, and institutional improvement processes. Dr. Jaggars has published extensively on student success topics in journals such as The Journal of Higher Education, Economics of Education Review, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, Community College Review, Computers & Education, and American Journal of Distance Education. Her 2015 book from Harvard University Press (co-authored with Thomas Bailey and Davis Jenkins), Redesigning America's Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success, distills a wealth of research evidence which supports the need for a fundamental redesign of the way two-year colleges operate, stressing the integration of services and instruction – both online and face-to-face – into more clearly structured programs of study that support every student’s goals.