Mona Hicks

About Mona

As senior associate vice provost and dean of students, Mona leads Residential Education, the Graduate Life Office, the Office of Accessible Education, and the Office of Community Standards. She has extensive senior-level experience addressing individual student needs and responding to students in crisis. She built the Saint Louis University dean of students office from the ground up, with a centered focus on student well-being and has taken those lessons to reframe the dean of students office at Stanford. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with students, faculty, staff and community partners, including her helping to guide students and the university community in responding to the Michael Brown shooting in nearby Ferguson in August 2014 framed in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

Mona’s experience serving as a resident associate for one of Rice University’s 11 residential colleges afforded her valuable insight into building residential communities with a focus on student agency, supporting her role here overseeing Residential Education as well as contributing to the implementation of our ResX vision and neighborhood residential experience.

Mona received the 2019 Donald Brennan Humanitarian Award from the Urban League of Metropolitan Saint Louis and Saint Louis University. In addition, she was named Woman of the Year by the Saint Louis University Women’s Commission in 2017. Mona currently serves on the Board of Trustees for her alma mater, St. Edward’s University, as the chair of the Institutional Oversight of Student Experience and Mission, and she recently served board of NASPA – Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education as the Equity, Inclusion, and Social Justice Division director.

She holds a bachelor’s in biology from St. Edward’s University, a master’s in college student personnel from Western Illinois University, and a doctorate of education in higher education, leadership and policy from Vanderbilt University.