About Susan Frost

After 13 years in the Emory University administration, most recently as vice president for strategic development, Susan Frost is consulting with college and university leaders, helping them form and execute a strategic agenda, strengthen faculty development, or improve academic advising programs.  She continues to teach at Emory, where she is an adjunct professor in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts. 

Susan Frost’s recent articles include “The University as Global City” (Change, March/April 2004) and “Chaos and the New Academy,” a work in progress she is sharing with leaders and scholars as it is developing.   She has also authored Academic Advising for Student Success: A System of Shared Responsibility (1991); co-authored, with Ronald Simpson, Inside College: The Future of Undergraduate Education (Insight Books, 1993); and edited Using Teams in Higher Education: Cultural Foundations for Productive Change for the New Directions for Institutional Research series (1998). Frost’s articles appear regularly in such journals as Research in Higher Education and the Journal of Higher Education. She teaches graduate seminars on the culture and contexts in the American university, as well as planning and policy analysis in higher education.  Currently she is a Senior Fellow in the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia, where she earned her doctorate in 1989. 

While at Emory, Frost organized and developed the university’s first central institutional planning and research effort, designed and implemented major planning initiatives, and conducted comprehensive studies of faculty work and life at the university. Her studies of intellectual community and faculty work give the Emory faculty the distinction of being one of the most studied research faculty in the U.S. 

Frost consults at universities and associations including Georgetown, Yale, the Associated Colleges of the South, and Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Oregon.  In her practice, she helps presidents, deans and other leaders advance their strategic planning efforts and apply the concepts she and others have developed to higher education broadly.  Those concepts draw on her research interests including the cultures and structures of the American research university, the nature of intellectual community, the genesis and development of intellectual initiatives of faculty, and faculty careers and development. She often works in China and other locations in Asia, helping clients think strategically about opportunities in those societies, establish new academic programs or evaluate offerings.  For more information, see www.susanfrostconsulting.com. 

Meet our Staff

Amy Benson Brown, senior editor

Amy Benson Brown, Ph.D., has worked as a writer and editor in higher education since 1998.  She is the author of Rewriting the Word (1999) and co-editor of two essay collections.  Currently, she is at work on a book of poems inspired by the life of Sarah Grimke, a southern abolitionist and early advocate of women's rights.  Parts of that project have appeared in the journals, Poem and California Quarterly . Contact Amy at abrown@susanfrostconsulting.com .

Susanna Elliott, project manager

A native of Sweden, Susanna earned her BA in Industrial and Organizational Psychology with a minor in Business Management at San Jose State University.  Skilled in managing complex projects, she speaks English and Swedish fluently and has conversational skills in Czech. Contact Susanna at selliott@susanfrostconsulting.com .

Olivia Smith, research associate,

Olivia Smith is a candidate for the Ph.D. in women's studies at Emory University. She earned her BA and MA in English at Western Kentucky University. Currently, she is coordinating Kennesaw State University's Holocaust Education Program and editing a graduate guide for the National Women's Studies Association. Contact Olivia at osmith@susanfrostconsulting.com .