Associate Dean of Students
Email: jpauley@tusculum.edu
Campus Phone: Ext. 5820
Campus Mail: P.O. Box 5068
Office: Niswonger Commons, Student Affairs Office
Department: Student Affairs
Campus or Site Location: Greeneville
Jonita Ashley-Pauley serves as the Associate Dean of Students with over 9 years in the field. In her role she manages the day-to-day operations of the Student Affairs Division and oversees the departments associated with the division in their daily functions. In her daily role Dean Ashley-Pauley works to resolve student concerns, advises student groups, addresses disciplinary matters, manage the residence life program and serves on campus committees. Her primary responsibility is seeing that implemented policies and procedures are fairly and consistently carried out.
The Associate Dean is responsible for interfacing with students and student processes to ensure student needs are being met. Dean Ashley-Pauley works with co-curricular programs within Student Affairs to ensure that opportunities for student engagement are available and suited to the students’ needs. The goal of the program is to work together with individuals and offices across campus to help shape our students into responsible and civic minded individuals through creating opportunities for growth and involvement within the residential community.
Dean Ashley-Pauley is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Tennessee in Higher Education Administration. Her research interests are primarily centered on assessment leadership. One of Dean Ashley-Pauley’s ongoing projects will be creating a divisional assessment framework to benchmark students needs in comparison to the provision of current services. She joined the staff of Tusculum in 2003.
The Office of Enrollment Management is pleased to announce that Jonita Ashley-Pauley successfully defended her dissertation entitled “Everyone’s Doing It. Or Are They? Understanding Student Affairs Assessment Practices at Small Private Colleges.” The quantitative study examined a sampling of colleges and universities nationwide with less than 3,000 enrolled undergraduates to identify how student affairs programs at small private colleges, like Tusculum College, are seeking to achieve best practices. With the acceptance of her dissertation, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, conferred a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration on Dr. Ashley-Pauley. In recognition of this milestone, she will be hooded today at UT’s Thompson-Boling Arena.
“Dr. Ashley-Pauley’s leadership has been invaluable to our Student Affairs program” said Dean of Students David McMahan, “and her newly developed expertise provides Tusculum College with a significant advantage over our peers. Most small higher-education institutions are struggling with how to identify and/or allocate resources to assess their efforts while meeting the daily demands of their portfolio of responsibilities. However, failing to assess these efforts effectively merely assures inefficiencies in their ability to achieve strategic objectives, and we now have an expert to help guide our efforts to best serve our students and the college community as a whole.”
Dr. Tom Stein, vice president of enrollment management, commented said, “Dr. Ashley-Pauley’s commitment to students and her profession are reflected by her educational accomplishment in achieving her terminal degree. Tusculum is blessed to have her as part of the dedicated student affairs team of professionals.”
After having served as a hall director at East Tennessee State University while obtaining a Bachelor of Science and a master’s in public administration, Ashley-Pauley joined the Tusculum College staff in 2003 and went on to become the associate dean of Students in 2005. In her current role, Ashley-Pauley supervises the Residence Life, Student Activities, Recreational Sports, Multicultural Affairs and Orientation programs and assists in providing senior leadership for the Student Affairs program and crisis management support for the College. Ashley-Pauley lives in the Tusculum community with her husband, David Pauley, and their five-year old daughter, Helen.
