PROFILE | Tristan Denley
Tristan Denley Deputy Commissioner, Academic Affairs and Innovation, Louisiana Board of Regents
Dr. Tristan Denley currently serves as Deputy Commissioner for Academic Affairs and Innovation at the Louisiana Board of Regents. Before moving to Louisiana in January 2022, he served as Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Chief Academic Officer at the University System of Georgia, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the Tennessee Board of Regents and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Austin Peay State. Originally from Penzance, England, Dr. Denley earned his PhD in Mathematics from Trinity College Cambridge, and held positions in Sweden, Canada, and the University of Mississippi. At Ole Miss he served as Chair of Mathematics, and Senior Fellow of the Residential College program.
Throughout his career, he has taken a hands-on approach in a variety of initiatives impacting student success. In 2007, he was chosen as a Redesign Scholar by the National Center for Academic Transformation for his work in rethinking the teaching of freshmen mathematics classes.
At Austin Peay he created Degree Compass, a course recommendation system that successfully pairs current students with the courses that best fit their talents and program of study for upcoming semesters. This system, which combines hundreds of thousands of past students’ grades with each particular student’s transcript, to make individualized recommendations for current students has received recognition from Educause, Complete College America, Lumina Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and President Obama and won a platinum IMS Global Learning Impact Award in 2014.