Biography
Dr. Kateryna Schray has been the founding Director of the Center for Student Success at Marshall University since 2019. She earned her BA in English at La Salle University, her M.A. at Georgetown and her Ph.D. at UNC-Chapel Hill. She joined Marshall’s English Department as a medievalist and language historian in the fall of 1996. For decades, walking into the classroom was the best part of her workday, but in recent years she has found a new passion for – and genuine joy in – student success. She is Marshall University’s Chief Retention Officer.
Dr. Schray is an award-winning teacher and a productive scholar. Her accolades include the WV Faculty Merit Foundation Professor of the Year Award in 2013, the Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year State Award in 2014, and every teaching award Marshall offers at every level. Her many publications cover a wide range of topics in literary criticism, pedagogy and the scholarship of teaching and learning.
In addition to over twenty-five years of college teaching, Dr. Schray has served in various capacities in Marshall’s English department, taught in Marshall’s Yeager program, and held a Hedrick Teaching Fellowship in Marshall’s Center for Teaching and Learning. She has served as the coordinator of numerous retention initiatives and director of Marshall’s Writing Across the Curriculum program; she was also part of Marshall’s team for the HLC Academy for Student Persistence and Completion.
As the Director for Student Success, Dr. Schray developed programs and initiatives to promote retention, persistence and graduation, including the FAM Peer Mentoring Program, Supplemental Instruction and Total Withdrawal Counseling as well as programs to help incoming freshmen adapt to college after COVID.