Wendy F. Hensel

Wendy F. Hensel is the executive vice chancellor and University provost of The City University of New York. Her tenure began June 1, 2022.

EVC Hensel has a decade of academic leadership experience at Georgia State University (GSU) in Atlanta, including roles as provost and senior vice president of academic affairs and as dean of their College of Law. A legal scholar who has served on GSU’s faculty since 1999, EVC Hensel is also a leading expert in disability law, policy and ethics.

As CUNY’s chief academic officer and chief executive of the Office of Academic Affairs, EVC Hensel oversees ongoing initiatives to improve student transfer, reimagine Black, Race and Ethnic Studies and Graduate Education, and foster innovation in pedagogy and instruction. She also oversees CUNY’s faculty and student affairs; research programs; student inclusion initiatives; efforts to promote student mental health and wellness; K-16 initiatives and efforts to promote enrollment growth; student success and research evaluation; and academic programs and policies.

EVC Hensel has spent her professional academic career at GSU, where she started as an instructor in 1999 before being appointed visiting professor in 2002 and rising to the rank of full professor in 2011. She served as the first associate dean for research and faculty development from 2012-2017, and then as interim and full dean of the College of Law before becoming university provost and senior vice president for academic affairs in 2019. Since January, she has been senior adviser to the president for strategic initiatives.

As GSU’s chief academic officer, EVC Hensel was responsible for the development, implementation and quality of the university’s academic programs and policies in its 13 academic units and academic support units. She supervised the university’s deans and associate provosts and directed international initiatives and study abroad, institutional effectiveness and research, strategic planning, faculty development and support, the Rialto Center for the Arts and the Office of the Ombudsperson.

Throughout the semesters of the COVID-19 pandemic, EVC Hensel led the development and implementation of academic plans to ensure that GSU’s 53,000 students received uninterrupted academic instruction. In under two years, she established the Office of the Associate Provost for Online Strategies and increased the number of fully online programs by 45 percent. She worked to create a holistic academic intervention and remediation program for the college’s most vulnerable students, who were particularly challenged during the period. She collaborated with leaders in GSU’s two-year campuses to create enrollment strategies to address the abrupt decline in this sector over the period.

As a passionate advocate for people with disabilities, EVC Hensel has frequently presented on disability law and her work on the topic has been featured in dozens of publications. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Integrate, an organization promoting inclusive employment for professionals with autism, and previously on the boards of the United Way of Greater Atlanta, the Cumberland Academy of Georgia, and Parent to Parent of Georgia.

Prior to her academic career, EVC Hensel worked as a private attorney and judicial clerk. Her experience includes working for the law firm Alston & Bird LLP in Atlanta, where she litigated discrimination cases and counseled Fortune 500 companies on compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. She also served as a clerk for Judge Orinda Evans of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Hensel is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and earned a bachelor’s in American public affairs with highest honors from Michigan State University, where she was a Harry S. Truman scholar ​​and an intern at the United States Supreme Court. In a 1991 national search, Conde Nast named Hensel among the country’s top 10 college women in the U.S. in the areas of politics and national affairs.