Dr. Okpodu is an environmental biologist with a particular interest in the agricultural impacts of climate change. She has been the Dean at Xavier University of Louisiana since July 2018.

Dr. Okpodu has a B.S. in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. in Plant Physiology and Biochemistry from North Carolina State University. After postdoctoral work at Georgia Tech, she held positions at Hampton University, Elizabeth City State University, and Norfolk State University, where she was the Chair of Biology, the Director of the Group for Microgravity and Environmental Biology, and the Director of a Designated Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence (a federally-funded training program to increase diversity of qualified applicants for defense/intelligence jobs). She left that position to become Dean at Xavier University of Louisiana.

Recently, Dr. Okpodu participated in the Joint Working Group on Improving Underrepresented Minorities (URMs) Persistence in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). This group of scholars got together over a three year period to address the fact that the diversity of students in STEM fields decreases at each degree level. Their goal was to create a set of recommendations for reducing institutional barriers.

Their recommendations start with the need for better and more transparent data collection: most programs are not keeping track of demographic information of their students and so it is not possible for them to notice trends in who leaves without a degree (e.g., by switching to a non-STEM major). They point out that better tracking of these data can help to identify programs that are doing a particularly good job at retention, which will facilitate learning from what they’re doing well.

Another recommendation is to make changes to the curriculum to include earlier involvement in research and more active learning techniques in the classroom. In the same vein, they point out that people are more motivated to do work that they see as being personally, socially, and/or culturally valuable - and recommend that focusing learning around real-world problems like renewable energy and climate change will better engage students.

Finally, they urge the creation of additional funding opportunities for students from underrepresented groups to pursue education in STEM.