04/20/2026
We've had a great year! Our final member event of the season features Jen Schlueter, presenting "Why striving for work/life balance might not be the right goal".
Jennifer Schlueter, PhD, is Dean and Director of Ohio State Marion, where she is leading a strategic transformation grounded in access, civic partnership, and land-grant purpose. She is advancing enrollment growth and financial sustainability while expanding experiential learning, STEM innovation, and arts- and humanities-based civic engagement. Her work positions Ohio State Marion as both a regional anchor and a laboratory for new models of public higher education — Marion in scale, Ohio State in scope.
Schlueter brings a career spanning academic leadership, teaching, and creative production across the country and internationally. Most recently, she served as Vice Provost of Academic Affairs at The New School in New York City and Associate Professor of Practice in its School of Drama. Prior to that, she held senior leadership roles at Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD), serving as the inaugural Dean of Graduate Studies and later Associate Provost and Dean of Academics. There, she led
strategic development of undergraduate and graduate programs and expanded youth, adult enrichment, and career-connected learning initiatives, highlighting how art and design skills serve commerce, justice, and a life well lived.
She previously spent nine years on the Ohio State faculty in the Department of Theatre (now Theatre, Film, and Media Arts), where she served as Director of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Chair. She also held university-level leadership roles as Faculty
Fellow for curriculum development at the Graduate School and Project Director of the Global Arts & Humanities Discovery Theme. She founded and produced the Lab Series, a student-driven performance initiative supporting more than 100 new works. Her
teaching and mentorship earned multiple university honors, including the Distinguished Undergraduate Research Mentor Award, the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching, and the Ratner Award.
A director, deviser, writer, and producer, Schlueter’s work has been presented nationally and internationally, including at 59E59 (New York), Cleveland Public Theatre, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Tristan Bates Theatre (London), and on BBC Radio 4. Her
scholarship has appeared in TDR, Theatre Journal, and Theatre Survey, as well as in edited collections, and she was named an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient in 2019.
Proudly educated in public universities, Schlueter earned her PhD and MA from Ohio State and her BA from Truman State University. The skills she honed as a performance maker — collaboration, close listening, storytelling, and a commitment to rigor and joy — ground her approach to leadership and her work building a campus that co-creates durable civic, cultural, and economic capacity with its community.
