Tracy Seffers, Shepherd University’s registrar, has been selected for the HERS (Higher Education Resource Services) Institute that will meet throughout the 2012-2013 academic year at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

HERS, an educational nonprofit, provides leadership and management development for women in higher education administration around the world. Since 1972 HERS has served the higher education community, preparing more than 4,300 women faculty and administrators for leadership roles. HERS has active alumnae on more than 1,200 private and public campuses and more than 500 HERS alumnae serve in senior-level positions.

Seffers, who came to Shepherd in 2003 and has been interested in attending the institute for several years, said she is excited to finally have an opportunity to participate.

Four weekend sessions will be held throughout the year in October, November, February, and March and will provide the same curriculum, networking opportunities, and work-applicable experience as the traditional summer institutes offered in past years.

“I’m very excited to be doing this-to finally have a chance to participate,” Seffers said. “There is no school for registrars. All of us who work in this area of the academy fall into it by serendipity, and then fall in love with it. We either leave quickly or stay and learn on the job and from our peers. If we’re lucky, we have fabulous mentors who have done the same thing-then fallen into the work, fallen in love with the work.”

Seffers said that this is an opportunity to have a structured post-graduate educational experience. The curricular themes offered will include understanding the higher education environment, planning and leading change in the academy, managing and investing strategic resources, engaging individual and institutional diversity and mapping leadership development.

“This allows me a chance to receive the specialized training that will be useful in support and enhance my work, but that I never had a chance to pursue,” Seffers said.

Seffers received her bachelor’s degree in English from Arkansas College (now Lyon College) and received her master’s degree in English from The College of William and Mary in Virginia. She worked as the academic coordinator for the TRIO (Upward Bound) program at Lyon College in Arkansas; prior to coming to Shepherd, she worked at George Mason University, first as an assistant registrar at the Fairfax campus, then as enrollment services manager at the Prince William campus.

Seffers said she is looking forward to the chance to network with other women in higher education across the country.

“This is an opportunity to wear that professional hat and to represent Shepherd, not just be ‘the registrar,'” Seffers said. “It’s a chance to develop skills that will help me serve this institution in the ways I need to serve it.

“It will be interesting to see what’s out there in terms of what’s on the horizon for higher education and what opportunities there are in leadership and for Shepherd and to see how best I can serve the institution,” Seffers said.

Shepherd alumnae of the HERS Institute include Dr. Dorothy Hively, assistant professor of education, who will attend the institute this summer, and Dr. Ann Legreid, professor of geography and dean of the School of Business and Social Sciences and Dr. Virginia Hicks, professor of health and physical education and dean of the School of Education and Professional Studies, both of whom attended the institute in 2005.