Adam Jones
Hometown
Jefferson, OH
Education
High school diploma from Jefferson Area High School, ’01; BA in Religious Studies, Minor in Mathematics from Hiram College (Ohio), ’05; MA in Higher Education from Geneva College, Beaver Falls, ’10; PhD in Administration and Leadership Studies from IUP, ’24
Family
My wife, Melissa, and I met our sophomore year in college. We have four children (ages 17, 11, 8, and 6).
Hobbies
Anything outdoors—fishing, kayaking, bird watching, hiking, biking, grilling or smoking food, coaching youth soccer. When inside—cooking, playing tabletop/board games, playing the guitar or djembe, singing, and reading.
Favorite food
Grilled or smoked meat and garden-fresh vegetables. I love grilled kabobs with pineapple slices.
Favorite place to eat in Indiana
My house!
Favorite TV show
Currently, Next Level Chef, and my whole family loves watching Bluey.
Favorite type (genre) of music?
Classical; favs are Gershwin, Tchaikovsky, and Chopin.
Fun fact about you
I worked a different job every summer while I was in college to get experiences in multiple fields (waiting tables, working in a sandstone mine, maintenance crew for the Lincoln Electric factory, and a summer school activities coordinator)
In 2010, Adam Jones began his IUP tenure as resident director of the Crimson Suites. Later that year, the Crimson Suites became Stephenson Hall. This was the first of many changes for Jones: over the next few years, he would serve as interim assistant director of three different areas—Occupancy, Living-Learning, and Training and Development.
Regardless of his title, all of his positions focused on students. That included living in Stephenson Hall and Northern Suites, which provided daily interactions with students in both formal and informal ways. Throughout his time at IUP, including his research on student success while completing his studies in the Administration and Leadership Studies PhD program, his focus has always been on ensuring the best and most successful experience for students.
Jones’s work at IUP and at other educational institutions has given him a unique perspective on the student experience. When he became interim assistant director of Student Conduct in 2017, he worked with colleagues to change the approach to student discipline, drawing stronger ties to the community by promoting personal development. That involved challenging students to take responsibility for their actions and to demonstrate respect for themselves and others. He renamed the area the Office of Community Standards to reflect this new approach, and he was named director of Community Standards in 2020. He also worked to streamline processes so that students had immediate feedback when issues were reported, and he reduced the response time for 96 percent of cases from 90 days to seven days or less.
In 2023, Jones was named dean of students, a role that seemed a natural fit for his knowledge of the student experience. In this Q&A, learn about what a dean of students does, why students should reach out to him, and how he can make every student’s experience fulfilling and safe.
What does a dean of students do?
My primary responsibility is to be a champion for students and to remove barriers to student success. I do that through many avenues, including advocating for the needs of students in various settings, ensuring students’ rights are protected, and completing policy writing and review. I oversee the work done by the Office of Community Standards, the Care Team, Fraternity and Sorority Life, Student Wellness and Engagement, Student Leadership, Military and Veterans Resources, and the Counseling Center.
One of the ways I remove barriers is by addressing concerning student behavior. Whether this is behavior that violates university policy or demonstrates that a student needs assistance (and sometimes those overlap), it is my responsibility to make sure that we are addressing these behaviors with compassion, understanding the “why,” to make sure we connect the student with the most appropriate resources to lead them to the best possible outcome. Success looks different for every student, so central to our approach is that every student is an individual, and there is no across-the-board formula that works for every situation.
Why might a student reach out to you?
Generally speaking, a student can reach out to me for anything. If a student is experiencing problems on or off campus, with other students or community members, or with processes or policies, they can reach out to me. If I’m not the right person, I’m going to make sure to connect the student with the correct one of my excellent colleagues from across the university. Even if I’m not the right person, I will make sure the student’s concerns have been heard and are addressed moving forward.
What does a typical day look like for you?
The beauty of being dean of students is there is no such thing as a typical day. New and different problems are constantly coming my way, so my typical day has me bouncing between supervising my staff, solving students concerns, staying up-to-date on legal issues in higher education, providing feedback on a policy update, meeting with colleagues from the Pennsylvania State System, or—and this is my favorite—getting to know students on an individual and casual basis.
What makes a day a good day for you?
I have a picture of a former student on the wall in my office. I look at it every day. He gave it to me as a joke, because it’s him when he was a little kid, but that picture is my inspiration to make IUP better today and tomorrow than it was for him when he was a student here. So it’s always a good day when I know I made IUP a better place for our students. Sometimes it’s something small for one student, and sometimes it’s something big that impacts every student. IUP is a great place, and one of the things that makes it so great is all the people who are committed to always making it better.
What advice do you have for students?
You will get out of your college experience what you put into it. This is true for all of life. It might take some hard work to engage fully in your classes, with the campus community, and with your peers, but the engagement will pay off. Keep the bigger picture of the overall journey through higher education in mind, but then dig in and take each hard step one at a time. It’s like climbing a mountain—you can’t climb the whole thing in one step. You have to plan out the journey, make stops, adjust to the conditions, and take one step at a time. Sometimes you have to completely stop and regroup. Progress is slow and worth the effort. When you get to the end, you always have something you can look back on and learn from, even if the end for you isn’t all the way at the top of the mountain.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received?
You don’t have to have your whole life figured out right now. There can often be so much pressure to make decisions and stick with them. I know very few people who have their whole life figured out from a young age and stick with it. (I do know at least one, though. A friend of mine from elementary school used to sell weather reports for 10 cents and in first grade was saying he wanted to be a TV meteorologist. He is now the chief meteorologist for a Cleveland, Ohio, news station.) Most people don’t have the experience of my friend. Most people have to work hard and try different things to discover where their gifts are and how best to use them. The worst thing we can do is sit still, because life is like being in a river—you’re never truly standing still; you’re moving either forward or backward. The point is, don’t give up because you’re not like my friend who knew he wanted to be a meteorologist. Keep engaging, keep moving forward, keep discovering what you have to offer the world, and, most importantly, don’t do it alone.
I want to leave you with a brief story. A few years ago, I had a student who was not happy with a piece of a process that was going to have a significant impact on his future. He came to my office to propose an idea that would minimize the impact on him and other students. We engaged in a healthy discussion about it and brought in colleagues from around campus as well as other institutions to come up with a solution. The end result was a change in university policy that is still positively impacting students today. I tell you this to say that I really mean it when I say you can come to me with anything, and I will work with you to discover what might be possible. We can’t solve every problem, but we can listen and take any step forward we are able to.