Biography

Tracey M. Wofford, Ph.D., is a native of Georgia with 21 years of experience in higher education enrollment management and over 31 years of leadership and management experience. Dr. Wofford holds a bachelor’s degree in Management and a master’s degree in Leadership from Shorter College (now Shorter University), and earned her Ph.D. in Higher Educational Leadership from Mercer University in 2014. She added the Certified Student Affairs Educator (CSAEd.) credential in 2023. Before transitioning to higher education, she worked in Information Technology for The Coca-Cola Company and in Telecommunications for Sprint and MCI.

She is currently the graduate academic advisor to Atlanta Master of Arts in Teaching students and Instructor in the M.Ed. in Higher Education Leadership program. She previously served as Program Director of the M.Ed. in Higher Education Leadership program. Prior to that, she served 12 years as the Director of Graduate Admissions and Student Success for the Tift College of Education programs at Mercer University. Before this, she was the Enrollment Manager for Shorter College via contract with the Institute for Professional Development (IPD), an enrollment management consulting division of The Apollo Corporation, most recently acquired by Ruffalo Noel Levitz.

Dr. Wofford studies organizational leaders and leadership, particularly top leader ascension, charismatic leadership bellwether moments, and leader tenure. Her research areas are institutional leader mobility, turnover, and its effects on organizational disruption. Professionally, her focus is leadership via the lens of strategic enrollment management including higher education leadership, student recruiting, inquiry cultivation and management, admissions counseling, financial aid counseling, enrollment conversions, reporting, analytics, retention, and student care.