President Jeffrey A. Doggett, Ed.D.
Jeffrey A. Doggett, elected in February 2024 and beginning on July 1, 2024, is Wagner College’s 21st president.
Dr. Doggett joins Wagner from Merrimack College, a Catholic Augustinian institution where he served most recently as Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chancellor of Learning and Student Success. During his service to Merrimack since 2011, the college’s undergraduate population more than doubled to nearly 4,000 students while high school GPA grew, and graduate programs grew even more steadily. During that period, Merrimack developed new academic programs and student experience initiatives that helped make Merrimack one of the fastest-growing masters comprehensive institutions in the country, with an equally impressive strengthening of its brand and financial position. In his various roles, including Merrimack’s Chief Financial Officer, Dr. Doggett oversaw the financing and campus master planning for much of the campus’s development.
Dr. Doggett’s work within the community has always been an important part of his life. From serving on political campaigns at the local, state and national level, to developing large-scale economic development ideas, to his doctoral dissertation on redefining anchor institutions to include those schools that are small and non-urban, his approach to the community as an interdependent ecosystem is central to how he thinks and works.
In addition to leading on campus, Dr. Doggett has actively engaged in regional and national conversations about the future of higher education, including federal student loan programs, the role institutions can play in economic development, innovation in higher education, and the importance of protections for student-athletes.
Dr. Doggett earned his Ed.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and his B.S., M.P.A., and M.B.A. degrees from Northeastern University.
A native of Salem, Massachusetts, Dr. Doggett split his undergraduate years at Northeastern between rowing crew, participating in the cooperative education program, working on a variety of political campaigns and interning in the White House.
Today, Dr. Doggett resides at the president’s residence, Nicolais House, on Grymes Hill, Staten Island with his wife, Kristen, and their two school-aged children, Lincoln and Margot.
To contact the Office of the President, please email president.office@wagner.edu.