About the Provost and the
Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
Cynthia Jackson-Elmoore
Dr. Cynthia Jackson-Elmoore joined Cal Poly as Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs in August 2020.
Prior to coming to Cal Poly, Dr. Jackson-Elmoore served as the dean of the Honors College at Michigan State University (MSU), where she oversaw the program for high-achieving undergraduates, as well as the Academic Scholars Program, the National/International Fellowships & Scholarships Office, and the MSU Debate Program. Dr. Jackson-Elmoore was also a professor with affiliations in the MSU School of Social Work and the Global Urban Studies Program. She also co-chaired a university level Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Steering Committee and was appointed to the MSU Strategic Planning Committee.
Before becoming dean, Dr. Jackson-Elmoore served as Acting Assistant Dean of the Urban Affairs Program, Director of the Urban Studies Graduate Program in the College of Social Science, and Co-Director of the Program in Urban Politics and Policy at Michigan State University.
Dr. Jackson-Elmoore has taught courses in public policy processes and analysis, urban politics, evaluation, and social welfare policy and services; conducted evaluations on community health care reform; and served as project manager for a multi-state research study.
Her work has been published in Policy Studies Review, Policy Studies, Review of Policy Research, Urban Affairs Review, Cities, Health Education Research, American Journal of Health Education, Social Work, Public Productivity and Management Review, Korean Review of Public Administration and Transactions of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE).
She has also published several book chapters and is a co-author of Reinventing Civil Society: The Emerging Role of Faith-Based Organizations (M.E. Sharp) and a co-editor of Reclaiming Brownfields: A Comparative Analysis of Adaptive Reuse of Contaminated Properties (Ashgate Publishing, LTD), Nonprofits in Urban America (Quorum Books) and a journal symposium for Policy Studies Review. She also served as Senior Associate Editor of the Journal of Urban Affairs.
Dr. Jackson-Elmoore earned doctorate and master's degrees in Public Administration, with a public policy emphasis, from the University of Southern California and a bachelor's in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware. She also earned certification from the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.