Jess Boersma, PhD, MSBA, MBA, PMP
Chief of Staff & Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives/Assistant Secretary to the Board of Trustees
About
Dr. Jess Boersma joined UNC Pembroke as the Chief of Staff and Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives in June 2023 after serving in several key leadership roles at UNC Wilmington for over two decades.
In addition to serving on the chancellor’s cabinet, he is the Assistant Secretary to the UNCP Board of Trustees.
Prior to joining UNCP, Boersma served as associate dean for Student Success and Applied Learning at UNCW. Previously he was associate director for UNCW’s Institute for Interdisciplinary Identity Sciences (I3S) and was the founding director of the university’s Team for Interdisciplinary Global Research.
As a first-generation, low-income student, Boersma has dedicated his career to improving equitable access and degree completion. As an undergraduate, he stopped out to serve in the U.S. military as a Special Forces operator, where he conducted various humanitarian and development missions in Central and South America. Upon returning to Wisconsin, a faculty mentor helped him to study abroad for a year at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Boersma holds a Ph.D. from Emory University and has earned degrees from three APLU member institutions as a student veteran and adult learner––a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, an MBA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a master's degree in business analytics from UNCW.
While at UNCW, he oversaw the university's Quality Enhancement Plan, which included managing funded applied learning projects in 35 out of 36 academic departments and deploying recovery grants in response to Hurricane Florence. He was the editor of two volumes on literature and society, guest editor for an applied learning journal, and the principal investigator on numerous grants with NSF, AAC&U, APLU, the CAA Academic Alliance, and the U.S. Department of State concerning applied learning, regional expertise and culture, student success and curriculum development.
A native of Waupun, Wisconsin, he and his wife, Caroline, have two children, Leo and Amelie.