Dr. Claudia Mercado is a scholar practitioner who serves as the assistant provost of enrollment services at Harper College, a community college west of Chicago, Illinois, overseeing a variety of areas and initiatives that help support enrollment. Dr. Mercado’s professional experiences have included managing new student growth, retention, completion, and student engagement with special emphasis on serving historically marginalized student populations. She has overseen areas such as Greek life, leadership programming, media organizations, admissions processing, recruitment, testing and placement, new student orientation, academic advising, first-year experience, registrar, financial aid, academic scheduling, international admissions, and tutoring. She has almost 20 years of experience working in higher education, including 13 years working within minority-serving institutions.

In addition to serving as a practitioner, Dr. Mercado serves as an adjunct faculty member for ENLACE, a higher education administration program focused on increasing the professional pipeline into Hispanic-Serving Institutions, at Northeastern Illinois University. She has taught for the past five years, focusing on course subjects such as community colleges in America, student development theory, and organizational leadership and theory. She completed both masters and Ed.D. degrees from the University of Kansas in higher education administration, with her dissertation focused on student engagement predictions on student success for underrepresented students at an urban institution. She completed her bachelor of arts in English from Missouri State University. Dr. Mercado has served on multiple nonprofit boards; is a co-lead facilitator for LeaderShape, Inc.; and presents and publishes regionally and nationally in higher education.