The Beacon Award

Dr. Leonard Taylor is an Associate Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs and Director of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) at Indiana University. Leonard has taught in college contexts for nearly a decade in various teaching roles, working with undergraduate and graduate students. His scholarship is focused on investigating and improving how student success commitments are enacted at higher education institutions. Through research, teaching, and consulting he works to understand, interrogate, and inform how administrators, faculty and staff members, and other post-secondary stakeholders use research, data, and promising practices to enhance post-secondary outcomes.

His research is deeply informed by his previous experiences facilitating High Impact Practices as a practitioner, and his ongoing research projects related to the implementation of student success practices in various institutional and disciplinary contexts. His work has been funded through the National Science Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Lumina Foundation, College Student Educators International (ACPA), as well as other national and local entities. Recent examples of his scholarship can be found in the Review of Higher Education, The Journal of Higher Education, and in a recently published volume of New Directions for Higher Education titled, Enacting Student Success: Critical and alternative approaches for practice.

Charag Krishnan is a Partner with McKinsey & Company’s Education Practice. He supports institutions on improving student outcomes, developing sustainable business models, operational turnarounds, capability building, advanced analytics applications, M&A as well as international expansion. He primarily works with universities in the US but has also served institutions across the spectrum of education – impact investors, non-profits, governments, and philanthropic foundations in India, Europe. Middle East and Australia.

Charag is a founding cohort Teach for India fellow where he taught grades 2 and 3 at a low-income municipal school, and was involved with setting and scaling up India operations of Generation, a non-profit focused on youth employment founded by McKinsey Social Initiative. He has also been a UNICEF Innovation Unit Fellow and currently serves on the Boards of Teach for India U.S. and Mantra4Change US. He graduated with an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management as a Youn Scholar, Tata scholar and Dean’s Award recipient and holds a Bachelors degree in Electronics from National Institute of Technology, India.

Dr. Nasser Paydar currently serves as the Assistant Secretary of Education for Postsecondary Education.

Dr. Paydar is chancellor emeritus of Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and executive vice president of Indiana University (IU). An IU faculty member for more than 36 years, he has held various administrative and executive leadership positions at the university. Paydar joined IUPUI in 1985 as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. From 1989 to 2003, he held a number of positions in the school, including chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, associate dean for graduate programs, associate dean for academic programs, and executive associate dean. From 2004 to 2007, he served as vice chancellor and dean of Indiana University–Purdue University Columbus. Paydar was appointed chancellor of Indiana University East in 2007, serving in that role until he returned to IUPUI in 2012, when he was named the campus’s executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer. He became IUPUI’s fifth chancellor in 2015.

As an IUPUI faculty member, he has served as principal and co-principal investigator on research grants from federal and state agencies and private companies, including Cummins Electronics, DePuy, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Army, and the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center. His research in the area of solid mechanics, with applications in biomechanics and electronic packaging, has been published widely in scientific journals. Paydar earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from Syracuse University.

Anthony Salcito works to help empower educators and inspire students to achieve more. He aims to transform the way we learn with the support of the best technology to help build critical skills for the modern, global workplace.

In his role as Chief Institution Business Officer at Nerdy, Anthony works to support institutions and educators with solutions for high-dosage tutoring, homework help, test prep, and enrichment all with the goal of driving student outcomes and helping transform education.

Anthony is a recognized leader in driving education transformation and has worked globally with education leaders and organizations to support new approaches to delivering student impact and supporting learners. Prior to joining to Varsity Tutors, Anthony served at Vice President of Worldwide Education for Microsoft, leading the worldwide execution of the company’s vision for education, and pioneering many core programs and education offerings including Live@EDU which evolved to be Office 365, Partners in Learning, Microsoft Innovative Educator program, and Showcase Schools.

Anthony has served as an active board member at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, and Teach.org. He has also helped author a book on Education Transformation which serves as a reference guide for schools looking to drive innovation to enhance student outcomes.  You can engage with Anthony Salcito at @AnthonySalcito.

Dr. Bridget Burns – Named one of the “Most Innovative People in Higher Education” by Washington Monthly magazine, Dr. Bridget Burns is the founding CEO of the award winning University Innovation Alliance (UIA), a multi-campus national laboratory for student success innovation that helps university leaders dramatically accelerate the implementation of scalable solutions to increase the number and diversity of college graduates across the country. Dr. Burns is a frequent keynote speaker, and her work has been highlighted in national outlets like The New York Times, Fast Company, 60 Minutes, and she was featured in the documentary “Unlikely.” She received her Doctorate of Education in Higher Education Leadership & Policy from Vanderbilt University.

Paul N. Friga, PhD, is one of the foremost higher education thought leaders and strategists.  With 20 years of experience as a professor, researcher and consultant at UNC CH and Indiana University, Friga understands how public education really works and how it should change. His former experience as a consultant with PwC (earned CPA and CMA designations) and McKinsey (including projects in public higher education) round out additional relevant experience. He has also served as a Trustee at Saint Francis University and the Board Chair at Saints Francis and Clare Church in Greenwood, Indiana. He has an MBA and Ph.D. from UNC Chapel Hill.

Chris Moloney, PhD, serves as AGB Consulting’s Associate Vice President and Associate Managing Principal. In that supervisory role, he manages strategy development offerings for colleges, universities, and their governing boards and leads business development efforts with private institutions, while providing internal connectivity among consulting team and other AGB units. Moloney previously held the roles of Senior Director, Consulting, and Director of Strategy and Transformation Consulting within AGB, where he led the development of external engagement and business development strategies, digital initiatives, and oversaw operations. Moloney began his tenure with AGB in a business and partnership development role under the affiliated entity AGB Institutional Strategies, with significant responsibility for the operations and business development of that unit. Prior to joining AGB, Moloney served as the associate director of the College Division at Global Maximum Educational Opportunities (GMEO), an international education company, where he led a team engaged in building international education partnerships with colleges and universities across the United States.

Stephen P. Hundley, PhD, is Senior Advisor to the Chancellor for Planning and Institutional Improvement at IUPUI, where he is also a Professor of Organizational Leadership. Stephen provides strategic advice and consultation to the Chancellor, the Chancellor’s Cabinet, and the Council of Deans on a range of matters pertaining to IUPUI’s strategy, effectiveness, and future directions. He leads the Office of Planning and Institutional Improvement, including facilitating the administrative and program review processes; directing campus-level strategic planning activities; handling the executive search function for the campus; promoting various improvement-oriented initiatives; and serving as executive sponsor of IUPUI’s Program Review and Assessment Committee.

Stephen chairs the annual Assessment Institute in Indianapolis, which is the oldest and largest U.S. event focused on assessing and improving higher education. He is executive editor of Assessment Update, an award-winning bimonthly periodical from Wiley with a national readership, and he serves as host of Leading Improvements in Higher Education, an award-winning podcast profiling people, initiatives, institutions, and organizations improving conditions in higher education.

Stephen has addressed a variety of audiences in more than 30 countries on six continents and throughout the United States. He has been recognized for his accomplishments through teaching, publication, and service awards and has received competitive funding from private foundations and state and federal agencies to support his work, including continuous funding from the National Science Foundation for more than a decade. Stephen earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University and a doctorate from American University in Washington, D.C.

Louisa Hunkerstorm joined NCHEMS in April 2022 as a Research Associate. She has particular interests in translating data into actionable insights for decision makers and in fostering climates of improvement and growth. She previously served as the Director of Institutional Effectiveness at Central Wyoming College where she was responsible for institutional research, served as the institution’s Accreditation Liaison Officer, and oversaw multiple accreditation-related visits and reviews. She has degrees from the University of Washington and Dartmouth College.

Brian Prescott is President at NCHEMS, where he sets the organization’s strategic direction and leads a team of accomplished and committed policy experts, information analysts, and creative thinkers working to improve how postsecondary education serves the nation’s needs. He also leads and supports projects on behalf of states, state agencies and systems, and institutions related to state strategic planning, postsecondary finance and affordability, governance and organization, demographics, and student success and workforce outcomes. Before joining NCHEMS in 2016, he served as Director of Policy Research at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. He is a current board member of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center and a past board member of the National Association of College Admission Counseling. He has degrees from the University of Virginia, the University of Iowa, and the College of William and Mary.