Maria Dykema Erb, M.Ed. is the Inaugural Executive Director of the Boston University Newbury Center which was established to foster the holistic development and success of first-generation undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. Maria has over three decades of higher education experience having worked at the University of Vermont, Elon University, Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and currently at Boston University. She has worked in a broad range of areas including Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging; student recruitment/admissions, enrollment management, academic advising, retention, and outreach; academic dean’s office and graduate/professional school program administration; and student affairs/life.

As a proud first-generation college graduate, Maria holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of New Hampshire and Master of Education degree from The University of Vermont (UVM).

As a higher education and student affairs practitioner, Maria has shared her scholarship through numerous presentations and book chapters. Most recently, she has chapters in: Know That You Are Worthy: Experiences from First-Generation College Graduates; A Handbook for Supporting Today’s Graduate Students; A Practitioner’s Guide to Supporting Graduate and Professional Students; and Fostering First Gen Success and Inclusion: A Guide for Law Schools (in press).

Anthony Abraham Jack, Ph.D. is the Inaugural Faculty Director of the Boston University Newbury Center and Associate Professor of Higher Education Leadership at Boston University.

His scholarship appears in the Common Reader, Du Bois Review, Social Problems, Sociological Forum, and the Sociology of Education and has earned awards from the American Sociological Association, American Educational Studies Association, Association for the Study of Higher Education, Eastern Sociological Society, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Tony held fellowships from the Ford Foundation and the National Science Foundation and was a 2015 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow. In 2016, The National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan named him an Emerging Diversity Scholar. In May 2020, Muhlenberg College awarded him an honorary doctorate for his work in transforming higher education.

The New York Times, Teen Vogue, Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Huffington Post, The Nation, American Conservative Magazine, The National Review, Commentary Magazine, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Times Higher Education, Vice, Vox, and NPR have featured his research and writing as well as biographical profiles of his experiences as a first-generation college student. The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students (2019) was awarded the 2020 Mirra Komarovsky Book Award, the 2019 CEP Mildred Garcia Award for Exemplary Scholarship, and the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize and was also named a finalist for the 2019 C. Wright Mills Award and a NPR Book’s Best Book of 2019. It is available in English and Chinese. His second book, Class Dismissed: When College Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price (2024), received a Starred Review from Kirkus Reviews, was named a finalist for the 2024 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Education from Foreword Reviews, and earned the 2025 PROSE Award for Education Theory and Practice by the Association of American Publishers.

Ian F. McNeely is professor of history and senior associate dean for undergraduate education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A specialist in German history and the history of knowledge, he is the author of three books, including The University Unfettered: Public Higher Education in an Age of Disruption (2025).

Dr. Dan Volchok is currently the Assistant Dean of Student Success at Harvard University’s Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. In this role he supports nearly 5,000 Master’s and PhD students studying in 57 graduate programs across the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering. Dr. Volchok is responsible for most non-academic support services including student conduct, policy development and review, major events such as orientation, convocation and commencement, emergency management and collaboration with university services including disability services, general counsel, health services, registrar, campus police and international students.

Prior to Harvard, Dr. Volchok was Associate Dean of the Tufts University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences where he was responsible for all student, faculty and academic affairs within the school. In addition to supervising admissions, registrar and program services, he managed student affairs, advised the students government and helped develop new academic programs. He was previously Assistant Dean for Graduate Student Life at Northeastern University and Director of Graduate Program and Student Services at Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business.

Dr. Volchok is also currently adjunct faculty in the Northeastern College of Professional Studies Graduate School of Education where he teaches a variety of courses in the Master’s program, including Higher Education Law and Policy, as well as acting as Dissertation Chair for doctoral students in the EdD program.

Dr. Volchok continues to advocate for graduate and professional students through his professional positions and work with the NASPA Administrators in Graduate and Professional Student Services Knowledge Community.

Dr. Volchok earned a Bachelors in Business Administration and MBA from Ohio University and an EdD from Teachers College, Columbia University.