Melodye MacAlpine is Associate Dean in the Roy H. Park School of Communications. She has been working in student affairs on college campuses for over 20 years and joined Ithaca College in March 2024. Prior to arriving at IC, MacAlpine served as Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Administration in the College of Law at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.
Throughout her career, Dr. MacAlpine has focused on advocating for and supporting students in a variety of academic disciplines. She works from the perspective that higher education institutions should always be improving processes and approaches to better serve students as they navigate their education to become professionals. She proudly calls herself a "policy nerd" because she loves digging into the broader "whys" and "hows" of what we do in higher education administration, looking for new ways to tackle old challenges.
Dr. MacAlpine finds it especially rewarding to support female-identifying students and colleagues and seeks opportunities to lead the way in those areas. Her dissertation research explored gender barriers to leadership for women in student affairs.
Dissertation: Exploring Gendered Barriers to Higher Education Leadership for Women in Midlevel Student Affairs Roles
Education
Ed.D., Learning and Leading; University of Portland, Oregon
M.Ed., Student Personnel Administration in Higher Education; Springfield College, Massachusetts
B.A. Psychology, St. John Fisher College (now St. John Fisher University), Rochester, NY