Jennifer Brown, Ph.D.

Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs

California State Polytechnic University-Pomona

Dr. Jennifer Brown is the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at California State Polytechnic University-Pomona. Prior to her appointment at Cal Poly Pomona in 2022, Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education (VPDUE) and a Professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). In her role as VPDUE, Dr. Brown leads the undergraduate education division and spearheads institutional student success efforts for 20,000 + undergraduates. Jennifer also oversees persistence and retention initiatives, which entails working closely with key campus stakeholders to foster inter-institutional collaborations.

In her capacity as an academic affairs leader, Dr. Brown works with the academic senate on undergraduate program reviews and leads academic administrative or non-academic program reviews. Jennifer also oversees the Academic Resource Center, Summer Sessions, University Writing Program, Center for Teaching and Learning, University Innovation Alliance Fellows, Special Projects, and Student Engagement. Jennifer convenes campus stakeholder groups that are focused on enrollment management, course demand, and student success outcomes. She also works with advancement on fundraising for student success initiatives and advises the Provost on all matters regarding increasing student retention and graduation rates. Additionally, Dr. Brown represents UCR as the University Innovation Alliance (UIA) liaison.

Prior to UCR, Dr. Brown served as the Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School at Oregon State University (OSU) and a professor in the Department of Horticulture. At OSU, she oversaw 80+ graduate programs including 4,500 graduate students/post-docs and 2,000 graduate faculty.

Preceding her administrative leadership appointments at OSU, she was a faculty member with a joint appointment in the departments of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture & Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. Here she created an integrated extension, teaching, and research program that answered marketing questions related to start-up businesses, trends in entrepreneurship, forms of ownership, consumer behavior analysis, and business planning procedures. Her expertise and knowledge base in the specialty crop industry have been recognized nationally as she was appointed to the National Agricultural Statistics Service advisory committee. She was also the inaugural Director of Distance Education where she created the concept of AgOnline.

Dr. Brown earned her Ph.D. in Horticulture with an emphasis in Marketing and Consumer Behavior in 2004 from Michigan State University. A focus of her research has been supply-chain demand and consumer preferences, and she has been the author or co-author of numerous peer-reviewed journal articles. She received an M.S. degree in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (NRES) with an emphasis in agribusiness and survey methodology in 2001 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Her baccalaureate degree is in Ornamental Horticulture from UIUC.

Dr. Brown is passionate about empowering each member of the campus community to achieve their full potential and leads initiatives that have enabled the Undergraduate Education office to be recognized as a hub of innovation and growth.