Ashley Finley

Dr. Ashley Finley is the vice president of strategic planning and partnerships and senior advisor to the president at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). She was previously the associate vice president for academic affairs and founding dean of the Dominican Experience at Dominican University of California. She began her career as a faculty member in the sociology department at Dickinson College, where she taught research methods, statistics, and social inequality. 

Dr. Finley’s interest in multilevel program evaluation is informed by having served as the national evaluator for the Bringing Theory to Practice project from 2006-2018. During this time, she worked with hundreds of project campuses to assess the interconnections between students’ learning, psychosocial well-being, and civic engagement at the campus and national levels. Most recently, she served as the PI for LaGuardia Community College’s “First in World” grant awarded through the US Department of Education. 

In her current role, Dr. Finley guides strategic initiatives and planning across AAC&U’s program offices in collaboration with association leaders and member campuses and oversees the Association’s research agenda. She received a BA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MA and PhD, both in sociology, from the University of Iowa.