The Associate Dean, Strategic Education Initiatives provides school-wide leadership for the Krieger School’s Strategic Education Portfolio, the school’s third academic pillar alongside undergraduate and doctoral education. The associate dean oversees master’s programs, for-credit non-degree academic offerings, and lifelong learning initiatives across residential, hybrid, online, and global formats. The goal of this model is to preserve full faculty ownership of academic content and governance while reducing fragmentation, improving coordination, and providing consistent, high-quality centralized support that enables programs to grow and thrive.
Cummings is a senior academic and enterprise leader with extensive experience guiding large public research universities through innovation, growth, and organizational transformation in close partnership with faculty. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, she served as Senior Assistant Provost and Director of UF Online at the University of Florida, where she led a nationally recognized expansion of high-quality, affordable online degree programs and helped establish UF as a national leader in digital education. She previously held senior leadership roles at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, completing a sixteen-year federal career in Washington, D.C.
Cummings holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Florida, an MS in Environmental Science and Policy from the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering, and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, where her doctoral research centered on the needs of single mothers in earning and completing college degrees at AAU institutions.