“My dissertation topic is how to help STEM students persist through their undergraduate programs,” said Leo D. Pedraza, Stevens’ new Assistant Dean and Director of Student Life.
Pedraza is originally from Southern California, born in Los Angeles and raised in both Oceanside’s Camp Pendleton Marine Corp base and in the High Desert of California in a town called Apple Valley. He described his childhood home as “suburbia with less grass and more dirt, jack rabbits, Joshua trees, and mountains in the background.”
Rabbits aside, Pedraza wanted to return to the beach after high school, leading him to enroll in Cal State Long Beach for undergraduate study. He didn’t originally set out to study college administration, starting in the graphic design/visual communication program instead, with the intention of working in animation. During his time at Long Beach, he joined a fraternity, served on the Interfraternity Council and the ASI (student government), became an orientation leader, editor-in-chief of the Long Beach Union newspaper, and even worked as a guide for the on-campus Japanese Garden. He said being so involved gave him a change of heart, so he “asked a mentor in the student activities office how I can do what she does professionally, and she gave me some guidance to look at some college administration masters programs.”
From there, he changed his major to communication studies and headed to Oregon State University to earn a M.Ed. in College Student Services Administration. About his time after masters studies, he said, “Since then, I have spent that last 16 years as a high ed. professional at several colleges, serving in different capacities. I found my way to upstate New York where my first job was at Cornell working in fraternity and sorority affairs. Then I came down to NYC to work in the broader campus activities realm for Pace University, later Columbia University, and also Iona College. But it was in my previous job working for NJIT for the last six years in new student orientation that I got involved with student success initiatives for STEM students.”
Pedraza is now quickly approaching the end of his Ph.D. in Higher Education Leadership and Policy at Seton Hall, which is where the dissertation topic at the top of this article is from. Pursuing his Ph.D. is also what originally brought him to Stevens, when an assignment asked him to examine the organizational structure of another educational institution, and he picked Stevens. Collaborating with Dean Nilsen, this assignment got him excited about Stevens and convinced him that he would love to work at the school if the opportunity ever arose. From there it was just a matter of time before a position opened, and he applied for the first listing that he saw.
Now that he’s at Stevens, he said he is “thrilled to be here at Stevens as the new Assistant Dean and Director of Student Life. My hope is to build on the student life legacy by fostering a vibrant and energetic community here for the students, and I hope all the experience and education I have will be useful in accomplishing that at the university. The experience that students get from being involved on campus is invaluable to their careers and in helping to shape society after they graduate. I’m proud that my team and I get to play a major role in that, and I am looking forward to supporting our students through their co-curricular experience here at Stevens.”
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