Ph.D., Claremont Graduate University
M.A., Stanford University
B.A, Mathematics, Cornell University
Professional Work
Prior to assuming her current faculty position at CGU in 1987, Smith served as a college administrator for 21 years in planning and evaluation, institutional research and student affairs at liberal arts colleges. Her current research, teaching, and publications have been in the areas of organizational implications of diversity, assessment and evaluation, leadership and change, governance, women’s colleges, HBCU’s, diversity in STEM fields, and faculty diversity.
In addition to numerous articles and papers, she is an author or co-author of:
Hiring the Next Generation of Faculty: Will Myths Become Excuses
In partnership with five other evaluators of national diversity projects, she has been a co-author of:
To Form a More Perfect Union: Campus Diversity Initiatives
A Diversity Research Agenda
Assessing Campus Diversity Initiatives.
She has served as an evaluator and consultant to numerous projects and campuses across the country and to foundations such as the James Irvine Foundation, the Haas Jr. Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and The Hewlett Foundation. She is a participant in a Kellogg Foundation Research Advisory Board, Harvard Medical School, Building an Agenda for Research on Affirmative Action and Diversity in the health professions. She served as part of two U.S. delegations to Ford Foundation sponsored trinational conferences (India, South Africa, U.S.) on campus diversity in higher education that took place in South Africa and the United States for which she wrote a paper on issues of evaluation. Most recently Smith has been a Fulbright Senior Specialist in South Africa.
Smith also served as one of three Principals responsible for the evaluation of the Campus Diversity Initiative for the James Irvine Foundation in collaboration with the Association of American Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C. This five-year project involved working with 28 private colleges and universities in California to develop their capacity to sustain and monitor progress on institutional diversity. That project has resulted in a final report, 3 research briefs (on unknown students, faculty hiring, and the intersection of race and class), and a resource kit for campuses and a monograph, Making a Real Difference with Diversity: A Guide to Institutional Change.
Teaching Interests
Politics and Governance of Higher Education
College Student Experience
Organizational Implications of Diversity in Higher Education
Organizational Change, Organizational Learning, and Assessment
Adult Development
Research Interests
Organizational change and diversity in higher education
2013 Claremont Graduate University 
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