Ereka R. Williams, PhD joins Dogwood Health Trust as the Vice President – Education, bringing more than 20 years of P-12 and post-secondary teaching, scholarship and leadership to the organization.  Most recently, Dr. Williams served as the Associate Provost for Academic Strategy and Institutional Effectiveness at Winston Salem State University.  Prior to that role, she served as Associate Dean of Education, Quality Assurance and Community Engagement at WSSU and Associate Dean of Education at Fayetteville State University (her alma mater).  At both institutions, she facilitated curriculum revisions, resource restructuring, the creation of Teacher Residency models and initiated regional and national partnerships aimed toward strengthening valid and reliable quality assurance systems for teacher education programs. 

Prior to FSU, she was tenured faculty in the College of Education at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.  While there, she led two academic units as Departmental Chairperson, earning distinctions including the University Outstanding Teacher of the Year award and Interdisciplinary Research Team Award finalist honors.  She collaborated with public schools, community leaders and colleagues to secure over $3.9 million dollars in federal funding aimed at leveraging equitable outcomes for rural districts in North Carolina. Her partnership commitment led her to collaborate with several districts to establish distance cohort models designed to advance P-12 teacher pedagogy through National Boards for Professional Teaching Standards-aligned programs. In addition, she collaborated with community college leaders to establish pipelines to the teaching profession through learner-centered, responsive 2+2 articulation agreements.  Those pathways supported adult learners toward completion and seamless transfer of their two-year, post-secondary credentials into the teacher education programs of the university.

Dr. Williams has served as a coach, speaker, researcher, board member and reviewer for rural and urban schools across the mid-west, northeast and southeastern US. She has similarly facilitated at large and small post-secondary institutions and organizations including the National Institute of Learning Outcomes and Assessment (NILOA) and the Lumina Foundation.  Her scholarship includes research, publications and presentations with a focus on equity, diversity, assessment, accreditation and leadership. A native North Carolinian, she earned a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.