John Shanahan will serve as DePaul's associate provost for student success and accreditation beginning July 1, 2025. (Photo by Randall Spriggs/DePaul University)
Following an internal search, Provost Salma Ghanem announced John Shanahan will serve as DePaul's associate provost for student success and accreditation in the Office of Academic Affairs. Shanahan is currently associate dean and director of Liberal Studies and a professor of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. His appointment will begin on July 1, 2025. “During his over 20-year career at DePaul, John has held a number of leadership roles while also engaging in significant scholarship," Ghanem says. “His commitment to the university and care and concern for its students has been quite evident in his work. I look forward to working with him in this capacity.”
As associate provost, Shanahan will serve as DePaul’s liaison officer for the Higher Learning Commission, provide guidance on accreditation matters across the institution and monitor specialized accreditations and licensures. In addition, he will lead several services that support student success, retention and degree completion at DePaul including:
- The Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning
- Writing Center
- Center for Teaching and Learning
- Office for Academic Advising Support
- First-Year Academic Success Program.
“I have had the rare opportunity to see excellent work of colleagues and students in fields spanning almost all of DePaul’s undergraduate curriculum,” Shanahan says. “Ultimately, I am inspired by the fact that assessment is an opportunity for institutional self-definition. I look forward to facilitating discussions of DePaul’s distinctive mission-centered student experience and how we measure and improve our pedagogy, how we integrate curricular and co-curricular resources and technology and how we impact students across our campuses.”
Shanahan will oversee the annual assessment of student learning and the cycle of academic program review as part of his new role. He will also serve as the convener of the advising manager’s board and as Academic Affairs’ liaison to associate deans council, liberal studies council, Student Affairs and the University Registrar.
Prior to his role as associate dean and director of Liberal Studies, Shanahan served as the director of undergraduate studies in English (2007-10) and director of the graduate program in English literature (2010-2015). A specialist in literature about science and technology, he has taught several award-winning classes over the past 20 years, including multiple Global Learning Experiences, collaborative co-taught sections and several Study Abroad courses.
Shanahan succeeds Caryn Chaden, who will retire at the end of the 2024-25 academic year.
“I am incredibly grateful to Caryn for her dedicated service to DePaul these last 38 years and wish her the very best as she enters her well-deserved retirement. She will be greatly missed,” Ghanem says. “The university will recognize her innumerable contributions later this academic year.”