Patricia J. Gumport concurrently serves as Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education and Director of the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research (SIHER) at Stanford University.
Dr. Gumport was appointed Stanford University’s first Vice Provost for Graduate Education in 2006. Her title was subsequently changed to Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs. She served in this role through 2019.
Since 2019, Dr. Gumport serves as Co-Director of the Stanford Leadership Academy, member of the Stanford University Board of Trustees Committee on Finance, member of the Advisory Board for the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program, faculty advisor and mentor for the Distinguished Careers Institute. She also serves as a strategic advisor to the Office of Community Engagement, Stanford Impact Labs, and related initiatives.
Research and Publications
Dr. Gumport’s academic publications include six books. Her most recent books include: Academic Fault Lines (2019), Sociology of Higher Education (2007), Academic Pathfinders (2002), and the fifth edition of the co-edited volume, American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges (2023). She has also published 60 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and commissioned reports.
As a sociologist of higher education, Dr. Gumport has focused her research and teaching on key changes in the academic landscape and organizational character of American higher education. She has studied the dynamics of academic change in several arenas – illuminating what facilitates change and what impedes it – across and within different types of colleges and universities. Driven by an abiding interest in knowledge change, Dr. Gumport has analyzed how organizational, intellectual, political, economic, and professional interests redefine the content, structure, and relative legitimacy of academic fields. Specific studies include: the emergence and institutionalization of interdisciplinary fields; professional socialization across academic disciplines; organizational restructuring and selective investment; the ascendance of industry logic in public higher education; forces that promote and inhibit academic collaboration; decision-making about appropriate organizational forms to support new ideas; and leading organizational change for optimal effectiveness with internal and external stakeholders. Her research within the United States and Europe examines how universities that are ostensibly competitors determine when and how to collaborate. Her analyses include implications for academic leaders who pursue strategic initiatives, manage environmental pressures and stakeholder interests, and seek leadership development resources.
Launched in 2023, Dr. Gumport is leading a project to provide much-needed insight into what is commonly referred to as “public impact research.” The study examines how university leaders and faculty shape their research priorities, including whether and how to focus on societal problems and involve collaborators beyond higher education. A comparative case study design anchors two levels of analysis—university and faculty—primarily through semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The project is receiving generous support from the Doris Duke Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Awards and Professional Recognition
Dr. Gumport has received numerous awards for her research, teaching, and service. She received the 2006 American Educational Research Association’s Exemplary Research Award in recognition of her outstanding scholarly contributions to the study of higher education. These contributions were made possible by $17M in research grants from government agencies and foundations over two decades. For her largest grant award (1996-2004), she served as the founding Executive Director and Principal Investigator of the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement headquartered in the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research at Stanford University.
Dr. Gumport’s expertise is recognized both nationally and internationally. She has presented over 100 peer-reviewed papers at professional conferences and over 75 invited addresses to higher education organizations and institutes in the United States (such as the American Council on Education, the Association of Governing Boards, and the Washington Higher Education Secretariat) and abroad (in Copenhagen, Hiroshima, Kassel, London, Mexico City, Rome, Stockholm, and Sydney). She has served on the editorial boards of three leading higher education journals: The Review of Higher Education, Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning, and The Journal of Higher Education (Chair, 1994-1995), and reviewed book manuscripts for major university presses. She has served on the Board of Directors for the Association for the Study of Higher Education, and on advisory boards for significant national research projects.
Dr. Gumport was selected as a Fellow in the inaugural cohort of Stanford University President’s Leadership Academy in 2008 and as a Senior Fellow in the American Leadership Forum-Silicon Valley in 2011.
In 2019, she received Stanford University’s highest honor for distinguished leadership and exceptional service, the Kenneth M. Cuthbertson Award.
Consulting Activities
Dr. Gumport’s consulting activities span a wide range of topics and clients. Through interviews, focus groups, in-depth case studies, commissioned projects, and presentations, she has provided expertise to higher education leaders and policymakers facing contemporary pressures for change, challenges in organizational restructuring, curricular change, strategic planning, academic program review, faculty productivity, graduate education, interdisciplinarity, diversity, and inclusion. For state systems, she has consulted on undergraduate education, academic planning, academic program reviews, inter-organizational collaboration, and public higher education system design in Arizona, California, Illinois, Missouri, New York, North Dakota, and Texas. At the national and trans-national level, she has served the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Council of Graduate Schools, the Fulbright Commission, the National Science Foundation, the OECD, the Social Science Research Council, and the U.S. Department of Education. She has also advised philanthropic foundations such as the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Education
Dr. Gumport received her graduate degrees – two master’s degrees (sociology, education) and her PhD (sociology of higher education, administration and policy analysis) – from Stanford University. She holds a BA in philosophy and English from Colgate University, where she worked as assistant dean of admissions upon graduation and later served on the Board of Trustees. After receiving her PhD, she was a postdoctoral scholar on a Spencer Foundation-funded study with Burton Clark, where she was responsible for the United States analyses in a five-country study on historical and contemporary challenges in graduate education and research. She then became a tenure-track assistant professor of organizational studies in higher education at UCLA before joining the faculty at Stanford University.
Academic and Administrative Experience at Stanford
In 1989, Dr. Gumport joined the Stanford faculty in the Graduate School of Education, teaching primarily graduate-level courses, in both Education and Sociology. Her administrative and university service includes directing the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research while concurrently chairing the higher education doctoral and master’s programs, and serving as chair of the division of Social Sciences, Policy and Practice in the Graduate School of Education. She has a record of longstanding service on university-wide committees, including 15 years on the Provost’s Budget Group, several terms on the Faculty Senate, the University Planning and Policy Board, the Diversity Cabinet (co-chair), the Provost’s Committee on the Status of Women, and the Executive Committee of Stanford’s AAUP Chapter.
In 2006, she was invited to serve as Stanford’s first Vice Provost for Graduate Education and began to plan for the launch of this new university-wide office in January, 2007. As Vice Provost, she provided leadership to promote academic innovation as well as to address significant systemic challenges. She identified synergies for collaboration by designing, overseeing, and expanding programs, initiatives, and policies to enhance excellence in graduate education as well as postdoctoral affairs. Priority areas have included advancing diversity and inclusion, intergenerational mentoring, interdisciplinary learning and research, professional and leadership development, faculty advising, and the optimal use of endowed and expendable funds for graduate students and postdoctoral trainees. Her academic leadership, including 13 years as Vice Provost, as well as mentorship of students and younger colleagues, has generated pioneering initiatives that inform faculty and administrative leaders who work in both academic affairs and student affairs in a variety of institutional types.
