Mary E. Earick, dean of the New Mexico Highlands University School of Education, has been selected as the new leader of the NIU College of Education.
Earick will begin as dean July 1 pending approval from the NIU Board of Trustees in May.
“I am honored to join students, staff, faculty and community members at NIU who are serving as a beacon for belonging and social mobility,” Earick says. “NIU invests in learners today as they become leaders solving real-world problems transforming communities through innovation. I am deeply privileged to be part of this vision and mission.”
NIU Executive Vice President and Provost Laurie Elish-Piper, who led the College of Education from 2016 to 2023, applauds the search committee’s choice.
“Dr. Earick brings a wealth of experience as an innovative and visionary leader in higher education,” Elish-Piper says. “Mary shares NIU’s commitment to student success, and we are excited to welcome her to the NIU family as dean of the College of Education.”
A veteran of the U.S. Army, serving as a field mechanic in Nürnberg, Germany, from 1983 to 1985, Earick spent the first 16 years of her post-military career in Connecticut’s New Haven Public Schools, where she worked as an early childhood, middle school science teacher and directed the district’s STEM and HOT Schools integrated arts programming.
Meanwhile, Earick was adding diplomas to her office wall.
In 1992, she secured a B.S. in Early Childhood Education from Southern Connecticut State University, where she earned her M.S. in Urban PreK-Grade 6 Education in 1998.
She then completed her Ph.D. in Language, Literacy and Sociocultural Studies at the University of New Mexico in 2006. That was where her career in higher education began in 2001, appointed during her studies as term faculty and Ph.D. candidate in Educational Thought and Sociocultural Studies.
Earick joined the faculty of the University of South Carolina as an assistant professor and, in 2009, joined Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. The professor of early childhood education taught there until 2014 and returned from 2017 to 2020, when her responsibilities also included serving as the inaugural director of the Holmes Center for School Partnerships and Educator Preparation.
Between those terms, she worked for the New Hampshire Department of Education as administrator and bureau chief of Integrated Programs where she developed a statewide Problems of Practice model of school innovation to address opportunity gaps for schools through mutually beneficial school university partnerships.
At New Mexico Highlands, a regional Hispanic Serving Institution and burgeoning Native American-Serving, Nontribal Institution, she manages five departments on campus as well as faculty at four regional centers, one research center and one research institute.
She is also executive director and founder of the Institute for Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Learning and Teaching. Over her career Earick has served as PI managing over $44 million in federal, state and private grants focused on closing opportunity gaps towards increased social mobility.
“We are pleased to welcome Mary Earick as dean of the College of Education,” says search committee chair Kelly Fiala, dean of the NIU College of Health and Human Sciences, “and look forward to the positive impact her enthusiasm and strong background in higher education will have here at NIU.”
Earick takes over for William Pitney, who has led the college as acting dean since 2023.
