April 24, 2024
Wanda S. Ingram, Ed.D. ’75
Senior associate dean of student academic success, retired
Doctor of education
Wanda S. Ingram, Ed.D. ’75 was a role model and advocate for students and their scholarship throughout her three decades as an academic advisor and undergraduate dean at Providence College. She retired as senior associate dean of student academic success in July 2023.
Dr. Ingram was a member of Providence College’s first graduating class of women and one of its first female graduates of color. Born in Baltimore and raised in Newport, Rhode Island, where her father served in the U.S. Navy and her mother worked on the base, Dr. Ingram came to PC at the invitation of the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Program. She intended to study chemistry but eventually chose psychology. She was one of nine Black women in PC’s first coeducational class.
After graduation, Dr. Ingram earned a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the C.W. Post Center at Long Island University and joined the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, then Southeastern Massachusetts University, as a college counselor in the counseling center. She later was director of new student programs and executive assistant to the college president. While working at UMass, she was asked to join the committee planning PC’s 75th anniversary celebration.
Dr. Ingram became assistant dean of undergraduate studies at PC in 1990. She served as first-year class dean, associate dean, senior associate dean, and interim dean of undeclared programs and director of academic advising. Known throughout campus as a change agent, she ensured that students received care, education, and mentorship. She met with new students and parents at Orientation and was part of the CARE Team (Campus Assessment, Response, and Evaluation) for most of her years at the college. In 2003, she earned a doctorate in educational leadership from Johnson & Wales University. She taught courses in PC’s undergraduate, continuing education, and graduate programs and in the doctoral program at Johnson & Wales.
In 2022, when PC installed its own chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s premier academic honor society, Dr. Ingram was inducted as a foundation member. She co-chaired the Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation Committee and Then, Now, Next: Fifty Years of Women at PC. She is the co-author of Let the Journey Begin: A Parent’s Monthly Guide to the College Experience, published by Houghton Mifflin in 2002.
Dr. Ingram resides in Cranston, Rhode Island. She is the mother of Keesha C. Ingram ’19G and the grandmother of Amaya Faith Harvey.
