Q&A with Heather Greenlee, Graduate College associate dean for student & scholar success

Heather Greenlee started her role in the Graduate College as associate dean for student and scholar success in spring 2023. She will lead the efforts to increase graduate student enrollment by improving recruitment and admissions, onboarding and retention, and mentoring by major professors. Greenlee earned her master's and doctoral degrees from Iowa State and has served as an equity advisor for the College of Veterinary Medicine and a director of graduate education for the Department of Biomedical Sciences. She answered a few questions about her new role in the Graduate College.

Greenlee

What are you most looking forward to in your associate dean role with the Graduate College?
I’m looking forward to learning about all the graduate programs at Iowa State.

What will your role as Associate Dean for Student and Scholar Success involve?
I’m still working out some of those details. However, I try to always approach this work from the student perspective. With every decision or position that I advocate for or against, I always ask, ‘What is the impact to the student?’

What attracted you to the opportunity to serve as associate dean in the Graduate College?
I’ve been involved with graduate education at Iowa State for more than two decades.  I’m excited to bring that experience to this new role.

What are your top priorities for recruitment, retention, mentoring, and/or program growth?
Each one of these is issues is incredibly important. The first priority is to get to know how programs are already working on these issues, and what they feel has worked and what hasn’t worked.

Who have your biggest mentors been throughout your education and career?
I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many great people, and I’ve learned something from each one of them. My Ph.D. advisor, Dr. Don Sakaguchi (Morrill Professor, Iowa State University), has probably made the single biggest impact on the way that I approach graduate education.

What is the best advice you received as a graduate student?
I learned to differentiate progress from work.  Progress is impossible without work, but work needs to be well planned and thoughtfully executed or it will not lead to progress.

Share a fun fact about yourself.
I’m a third-generation Iowa State alumna.