Dr. Sean Bridgen is the Associate Director for External and Institutional Partnerships at NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising and is a faculty member in the Department of Special Education, Counseling, and Student Affairs at Kansas State University. Prior to his appointment with NACADA, Sean worked on college campuses for over 20 years in various roles in academic advising and registrar’s offices. Sean was the inaugural Director of Academic Advising at the in the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Computing and Information, and an academic advising administrator at Penn State University, New Kensington Campus. Sean has also taught for Penn State’s Master’s Degree program in Higher Education. Sean served as an inaugural Excellence in Academic Advising Fellow (EAA) and is a member of the NSF funded Aspire Alliance National Change Team. He is a recipient of the Outstanding Advisor Award Certificate of Merit from the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA), a recipient of the NACADA Scholarship, a NACADA Summer Institute Faculty Member, a past Chair of NACADA’s Theory, Philosophy, and History of Academic Advising Community, and a recent appointee to the Fulbright Specialist Roster.

Sean’s research interests are studying higher education as a complex social system, the graduate curriculum of academic advising, social justice in higher education, and comparative issues in academic advising and personal tutoring. He has published his research in peer reviewed journals and has served as on the editorial board for the NACADA Review and The Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal.

Sean holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh, a Master of Arts in Student Affairs in Higher Education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), and a Doctor of Education in Administration and Leadership Studies, also from IUP.