Shawn Miller joined Rice as the associate provost for digital learning and strategy in November 2023. Shawn comes to Rice from Duke University, where he held several leadership positions, most recently associate vice provost and chief of staff for learning innovation. He previously served as Duke’s interim associate vice provost for digital education and innovation from 2021-23 and directed Duke Learning Innovation, which he co-founded in 2017. Learning Innovation was honored with the Duke Presidential Award in 2022 for its work to design, launch and sustain thousands of online courses during the pandemic. Under Shawn’s leadership, the team developed the university’s Flexible Teaching Initiative and resources during COVID-19, impacting a record number of faculty and students and putting a renewed focus on well-being. 

In prior roles at Duke, Shawn led projects to scale access to experimental digital tools, designed and launched a digital publishing platform for learning, moved thousands of faculty and students from a legacy learning management system to a new one, established and built on Duke’s partnership with Coursera, and helped launch the first undergraduate curriculum and faculty development efforts at Duke Kunshan University in Jiangsu, China.

Early in his career, he led the effort to establish the University of Texas at El Paso’s first learning management system. Along with 20 years of professional experience in digital education, Shawn brings his perspective as a former working, first-generation college student. His experiences pursuing his college education while working inspired him to introduce hybrid learning and more robust, effective forms of distance and online learning.

He is the key steward of Rice’s digital strategy, leveraging best practices already in place across the university as well as introducing new approaches and collaborations.