Jason Rivera
Vice Provost for Student Success and Dean of University College
Dr. Jason Rivera is Vice Provost for Student Success and Dean of University College at Ball State University. He is a senior academic leader with more than two decades of experience advancing teaching, learning, and institutional effectiveness across public universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges.
In his current role, Dr. Rivera partners closely with faculty, deans, and senior leaders to align academic policy, advising, student support, and institutional strategy in service of student learning, persistence, and degree completion. He provides leadership for academic advising, academic support services, student success coaching, student-athlete academic support, and the first-year experience, and works across divisions to strengthen university-wide approaches to retention and student success.
Prior to joining Ball State, Dr. Rivera served as Vice Chancellor for Student Academic Success at Rutgers University–Camden, where he provided institution-wide leadership for undergraduate education, experiential learning, and student success strategy. In this role, he partnered closely with faculty and academic leaders to advance instructional quality, redesign academic support structures, and use evidence to improve student outcomes. He previously served as Dean of the Sophomore Class and Director of the Intercultural Center at Swarthmore College and held multiple academic leadership roles at Montgomery College in Maryland.
Dr. Rivera’s scholarship and applied research examine student persistence, college completion, and the institutional conditions that support academic success. He is the author of Becoming a Care-Ready Institution: Operationalizing a Relational Framework for Student Success (2025) and a lead contributor to Achieving the Dream’s Equity Toolkit (2023). His research has informed the design of institutional initiatives such as Montgomery College’s Achieving the Promise Academy, and he has presented his work nationally. He brings a teacher-scholar and scholar-practitioner orientation to academic leadership.
Dr. Rivera earned his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in Minority and Urban Education from the University of Maryland, College Park. He also holds a master’s degree in Elementary Education from the College of Staten Island (CUNY) and a bachelor’s degree in History and Political Science from Manhattanville College.