Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs
University System of Maryland
Dr. Jenny Owens serves as Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs at the University System of Maryland, providing strategic leadership across academic affairs, student success, faculty affairs, and a broad portfolio of systemwide initiatives spanning 12 institutions. In this role, she chairs the Academic Affairs Advisory Council, serves as the System's primary liaison to the Maryland Higher Education Commission, and advises the Chancellor and Board of Regents on academic, student, and faculty affairs matters. Her portfolio includes graduate studies, academic innovation, transfer and articulation, Title IX coordination and compliance, early college programs, prison education programs, civic education initiatives, and systemwide library services.
She brings to this role more than twenty years of higher education, including her most recent position as Vice Provost of Academic Affairs at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, a majority graduate public R1 institution focused on health sciences, human services, and law. Over the course of her career, she has led the development and scaling of more than twenty graduate programs and advanced academic initiatives generating over $42 million in cumulative revenue. Her leadership has consistently bridged faculty governance, student affairs, academic operations, and institutional strategy, ensuring that academic priorities align with workforce needs, institutional goals, and evolving student expectations.
Alongside her administrative leadership, Dr. Owens is an applied researcher whose scholarship examines how patients and caregivers navigate access to care, particularly when travel and lodging are required. Her research positions medical lodging as a health-related social need and a critical, yet often overlooked, pathway to improving access to care and the patient and caregiver experience. She has developed national datasets and frameworks to better understand how lodging ecosystems shape access, experience, and outcomes. Her work has been published in leading journals including the American Journal of Public Health, the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, and the Journal of Affective Disorders, and featured in national and international media outlets including U.S. News & World Report and The Hill. She has received more than $2 million in grants and fellowships, including selection as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leader.