Mary Churchill

Dr. Mary L. Churchill is the Associate Dean of Strategic Initiatives and Community Engagement at Wheelock College. In this role, she manages strategic partnerships, including the college’s relationship with Boston Public Schools where she represents the college at BPS Equity Roundtable convenings. She currently serves on several local advisory boards: Boston Universal Pre-K, BU’s Initiative on Cities, and BU Wheelock’s Center for the Ecology of Early Education (CEED). Nationally, Churchill leads the college’s participation in the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education’s (AACTE) Reducing the Shortage of Special Education Teachers Network Improvement Community. She also serves as an advisor for the American Council of Education’s Learner Success Lab.

Prior to her time at Boston University, she served as Vice President for Academic Affairs at Wheelock College where she helped lead the merger of Wheelock College and Boston University. In addition to her work at Wheelock, Churchill has held leadership roles in universities and colleges in New England for over thirty years. These include positions at Salem State University, Northeastern University, Bentley College, and Emmanuel College.

Dr. Churchill is from Flint, Michigan and was the first in her family to attend college. Dr. Churchill currently teaches in the Higher Education Administration program at BU Wheelock and has also taught undergraduate and graduate courses focused on social and political theory; quantitative methods; social movements; race, class, and gender; urban sociology; women and politics; and cross-cultural understanding in the departments of Sociology, Political Science, and International Studies.

Dr. Churchill is an international voice for social justice and change management within higher education. She is the creator and editor of University of Venus, an award-winning blog at Inside Higher Ed and has written over 100 op-eds and blog posts published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Guardian (UK), and The Washington Post. She is also the co-creator of three podcasts focused on higher education: Rocking the Academy, View from Venus, and ExperiencED. Recently, Churchill co-authored When Colleges Close: Leading in a Time of Crisis (Johns Hopkins University Press) with David Chard, telling the story of the Wheelock-Boston University merger.

Dr. Churchill is a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion in higher education, particularly the promotion of women and people of color, which is an emphasis of her board leadership in the Massachusetts A.C.E. Women’s Network and her work as a faculty member of HERS Wellesley. Churchill has established herself as a strategic change leader in higher education and has consulted for numerous institutions including the Population Council of Cairo, the Boston Public Schools, Harvard Business Publishing, CUNY, SUNY, and the University of Massachusetts. She is also a member of The Boston Club, an organization dedicated to the advancement of women to significant and visible leadership roles, where she serves on the Governance Committee.

Churchill and her partner, Ernesto Valencia, live in Roxbury with their teen son, who attends Boston Public Schools. She is active in the Roxbury community where she leads her neighborhood association and has served on the boards of local nonprofits, including Dudley Square Main Streets and Project Hip Hop.

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