Lauren Way, MEd, EdD
Dr. Lauren J. Way is the director of the Master of Science in Higher Education Administration program. She oversees the department’s curriculum, faculty, student advising, and assessment in addition to teaching graduate courses. Dr. Way's teaching includes courses in applied research, curriculum design, women in higher education, and foundational courses in higher education administration. She has also designed and taught courses in entrepreneurship, business, management, and leadership in Bay Path’s management programs.
Dr. Way’s background combines close to thirty years of higher education administration and experience in launching and consulting for new ventures around the globe. In the early 1990s, Dr. Way lived and worked abroad during eastern Europe’s transformation to a free-market economy and worked as an international entrepreneur when she established a global consumer goods trading company. She later worked at the international law offices of White & Case, where she helped to advise and register new start-up ventures. In the U.S., Dr. Way has served as a foreign language interpreter for the Olympic games.
At Smith College, Dr. Way served in the International Study offices preparing students for international internships, Fulbrights, and other fellowships, and worked on the initial application process for what would become the Smith Praxis Program. Later she served as the associate director of the Lemelson Assistive Technology Development Center at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, where she was a co-PI on program grants of up to $2.5 million. Way has been quoted in “The New York Times”, “Boston Globe Magazine”, “Washington Post”, and her scripts have been used on the Discovery Channel, and by actor Christopher Reeve.
Dr. Way has founded and run several national advisory boards for educational programs; directed annual conference events in assistive technology design, business, and education; and designed and taught summer programs for high school girls to learn entrepreneurship. For over ten years, she served as an advisor for the Grinspoon Entrepreneurship Initiative, and worked with 13 regional colleges and universities to expand educational programs in entrepreneurship.
Dr. Way has presented and guest lectured both nationally and internationally. She was awarded a grant from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation to travel to Southeast Asia in order to research the transformation of the Malaysian higher education system as part of the country's move toward a knowledge-based economy. She has won a national teaching award in experiential education, and collaborated with multidisciplinary college educators from Cambridge, England, to win the best USASBE conference workshop award on use of innovative academic collaboration practices.
Please visit the MS in Higher Education Administration program page to learn about curriculum, faculty, program options, and more!