Jennifer Belichesky-Larson
Jennifer Belichesky-Larson, Ed.D., serves as Assistant Vice Provost for Strategic Initiatives. Reporting to Vice Provost David Sapp, Assistant Vice Provost Belichesky-Larson leads campus-wide efforts on undergraduate student retention, data governance, and other projects of strategic importance to the institution.
As LMU’s data governance officer, Belichesky-Larson’s responsibilities include the creation and oversight of institution-wide data governance policies, practices, and standards. Belichesky-Larson also serves as the provost’s primary adviser for undergraduate student retention, for which she coordinates and assesses relevant endeavors across all campus units and divisions.
Belichesky-Larson previously served as associate dean of strategic student initiatives in the Division of Student Affairs, where she oversaw research and assessment and student success, including First-Year Experience, transfer programs, veteran programs, the Guardian Scholars, and parent and family programs. As part of her duties, Belichesky-Larson created a research and assessment infrastructure, systemizing student engagement data collection and streamlining data importing in an effort to enhance retention statistical modeling.
During her 21 years at LMU, Belichesky-Larson has served LMU’s students to remove barriers to their success and develop campus-wide initiatives that impact their retention, persistence, and graduation. As chair of the Registration and Graduation Work Group, she led the creation of a sustainable student outreach infrastructure that continually identifies and addresses student barriers to course registration. Additionally, Belichesky-Larson chaired the First-Year Registration Work Group to develop a virtual online registration experience for incoming LMU students. Her success in partnering with Enrollment Management, Academic Affairs, and Information Technology Services to create a process that addresses the needs of each college and school was a key factor in her new appointment.
Belichesky-Larson earned her Ed.D. in educational leadership for social justice from LMU, focusing her dissertation on the impact of co-educational living learning communities on women’s persistence in the sciences. She earned an M.Ed. in higher education and organizational change from UCLA and an M.A. in English literature and rhetoric and composition from LMU. She is also a graduate of the Ignatian Colleagues Program. Belichesky-Larson has taught courses at LMU in the English Department, first as a teaching fellow in the first-year English program, and then for eight years as a part-time faculty member, teaching college writing, poetry, literature, and drama. Most recently, she taught courses in the Ignatian Leadership Institute and in the doctoral program in LMU’s School of Education.