Sharon B. DeVivo, Ph.D.
President
Vaughn College
Dr. Sharon B. DeVivo has been with Vaughn College since 1996 and president since 2014. She is the seventh president of the institution and the first woman. Vaughn is ranked as the number one institution in the nation in upward mobility and is the best at moving students from the bottom 40 percent to the top 40 percent in income.
Her strategic objective is to create a transformative educational experience inside and outside the classroom. She has led three strategic planning efforts that have helped to move the College from primarily a training institution to one that offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in aviation, engineering, management and technology. Vaughn serves a diverse student body of about 1,200 students who are more than 80 percent minority, mostly first-generation Americans and first-generation college students.
Dr. DeVivo was appointed by the US Secretary of Transportation to serve as the chair of the Youth Access to American Aviation Jobs Task Force which provided Congress in fall 2022 with recommendations on how to bring youth, particularly those who are underrepresented, to aviation and aerospace. She also serves on the board of Civil Air Patrol, Federal Aviation Administration’s Management Advisory Council, Council for Higher Education Accreditation, The Wings Club Foundation, Cradle of Aviation Museum, the Greater New York Councils Boy Scouts of America, International Aviation Women’s Association Advisory Board, Council for Independent Colleges and Universities, the Policy Committee of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, and as a liaison to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee.
She is the daughter of a US Navy Master Chief and lived around the world while growing up. Her degrees include an associate’s from the University of Maryland in Munich, Germany, a bachelor’s from the State University of New York at Albany, a master’s from Fordham University and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.