Jo-Ann
Sipple
, DA
Program Director of the MS in Communications & Information Management
Department:
Burlington Campus
Location:
Burlington Campus
Degrees
BA, Merrimack College; MA, Dusquesne University; DA, Carnegie Mellon University
Contact
Phone: 781.272.0222
Fax: 781.272.0112
Email: jsipple@baypath.edu
Profile
Jo-Ann M. Sipple, DA, currently a national higher education consultant, has spent more than 40 years in higher education as a faculty member, consultant, and administrator. During her 32-year tenure at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, PA, Dr. Sipple achieved the rank of professor of communications and served as Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs. While at Robert Morris, she led the design and implementation of over 30 new degree programs at bachelor, master, and doctoral levels in communications, information systems, and business disciplines. In 1999, Dr. Sipple returned to her native state of Massachusetts and served as Vice President for Academic Affairs at her
alma mater Merrimack College in Andover, MA.
Among her contributions to higher education, Dr. Sipple has served on the Board of Trustees for the International Poetry Forum since 1996 and the Ai New England Institute of Art since 1999. She has also been an advisory board member to the English Department at Carnegie Mellon University since 1992 and to the National Foundation for the Teaching of Entrepreneurship in Pittsburgh since 1995. She has served on the American Council on Education/Office of Women in Higher Education through “The Network” on the Pennsylvania State Planning Committee of the American Council on Education/ Office of Women in Higher Education since 1992 and as the State Coordinator since 1994. In 2000, Dr. Sipple was appointed the first Distinguished Fellow of the Middle States Association of Schools and Colleges, Commission on Higher Education. Since 2001, she has served as a consultant to the Council of Independent Colleges in Washington, D.C.
From 2000 to 2001, Dr. Sipple served as a consultant to Bay Path College and in 2001, she was appointed Distinguished Professor of Communications and Information Management and Executive Assistant to the President for Special Projects. She currently teaches on the graduate faculty and operates her consulting firm, J.A. Sipple Associates, Academic Counsel to Higher Education. She has provided consultations to more than 150 colleges and universities in the United States and Europe and as a distinguished fellow to Middle Sates Association/Commission on Higher Education, where she served as regular evaluator and chair of accreditation teams.
Dr. Sipple is the author of two books and numerous articles in various academic journals on rhetoric, communications from an applied linguistics perspective, and evaluation and assessment of writing programs. More recently, she was a contributor to the
festschrift, Inventing a Discipline: Rhetoric Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Young, published by the National Council of Teachers of English in 2000. She was instrumental in facilitating or co-authoring competitive grant proposals for over $2 million to advance academic programs in rhetoric, communications, and writing in the disciplines at Robert Morris University and $1 million elsewhere across the country. In 1998, she received the Hesburgh Certificate of Excellence for Teaching for four generations of writing across the curriculum at Robert Morris College.
