Memorandum
Subject: Welcome to Audrey Tanner as Vice President of Admission & Financial Aid
Dear MICA Faculty, Staff, Students, and Trustees,
Audrey is excited to join the MICA community and work with our top-notch Admission and Financial Aid team to continue to identify and recruit exceptional and diverse student talent for the College. Audrey will soon meet with Theresa Bedoya to benefit from her rich knowledge of admission and financial efforts at MICA.
In her words, Audrey says: “I’m so thrilled to be joining MICA at this time in its history, with the renewed mission and commitment to DEIG. This is a challenging era, but art and design education, at MICA particularly, has a uniquely salient role in shaping the future, for MICA’s community, for Baltimore, and for the world. I cannot imagine a better place to be.”
Audrey brings to MICA close to three decades of professional expertise in admission, financial aid, and enrollment management. She is currently Vice President of Enrollment & Marketing at Mills College in Oakland, CA. Her prior leadership experiences encompass those at our peer AICAD institutions (California Institute of the Arts/CalArts and San Francisco Art Institute/SFAI where she also oversaw Student Affairs), traditional colleges and universities (Boston University, Dominican University of California, Lesley University), and an institute for health professionals (MGH).
This happy appointment concludes a national search that started this past April with the renowned search firm Isaacson, Miller. Audrey was the Search Committee’s enthusiastic and unanimous first choice from a strong and diverse pool of candidates. It was clear to all those who met Audrey during the search that she is deeply aligned with MICA’s mission, vision, tenets, values, and commitment to DEIG. Informed by her own life journey as a non-traditional student, she is dedicated to open up pathways for students from all backgrounds to have access to and succeed in higher education.
Her educational background reflects her wide range of interests and an avid appetite for continual growth. She holds an AB in Art History from Smith College, where she was an Ada Comstock Scholar and earned honors of magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She later completed her BS in Psychology at Boston University and then MA in Organizational Management through University of Phoenix Online. Her Ed. D. in Higher Education Leadership was accomplished at Nova Southeastern University. Additional credentials include a Certificate in Marketing Strategy from Cornell University’s eCornell and a Certificate in Fiction Writing from University of Los Angeles Extension. In addition, she is certified as a 200-hour Kripalu yoga instructor and at the Master level for Reiki.
She looks forward to return to an artistic community. Her own creative practices include guitar and ukulele playing, oil and acrylic painting, and fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry writing.
Audrey currently lives in Oakland, California. Her plan is to move to Baltimore before the end of this calendar year.
Please join me in welcoming Audrey!
Please also join me in thanking the members of the Search Committee that I chaired (Alexa Kim, Christian Lallo, Christine Peterson, Jellema Stewart, and Sukyun Weaver) for their great work, as well as the excellent interim leadership provided to the Admission & Financial Aid by Chris Harring, DeRodrick Jonkins, and Murray McKay.
Sammy
