J. Douglas Toma is associate professor at the Institute of Higher Education. Before his appointment at the University of Georgia, he served on the Graduate School of Education faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, where he established and directed The Executive Doctorate and the Penn Center for Higher Education Management. Toma began his faculty career as assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he coordinated the doctoral program in urban leadership and policy studies.

In his research, Toma explores organizational, management, and policy issues in higher education. His most recent book is Football U.: Spectator Sports in the Life of the American University (University of Michigan Press, 2003). In it, he explores how spectator sports, namely football, contribute to institutional culture and external relations at research universities, thus providing a tool for enhancing resources and enabling institution building. He is also author, with Greg Dubrow and Matthew Hartley, of The Uses of Institutional Culture: Building Campus Community and Enhancing External Relations (Jossey-Bass, Fall, 2003), and with Richard Palm of The Academic Administrator and the Law: What Every Dean and Department Chair Needs to Know (Jossey-Bass, 1999). He co-edited Reconceptualizing the Collegiate Ideal (Jossey-Bass, 1999) with Adrianna Kezar.

Toma has also been a frequent contributor to the leading scholarly journals in higher education, including the Journal of Higher Education, the Review of Higher Education, and Research in Higher Education. Toma is a regular presenter at national and international conferences on higher education. He is program chair for postsecondary education (Division J) for the 2004 American Education Research Association (AERA) annual meeting. He also serves on the board of directors of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) as legal counsel. Toma is on the board of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education and a member of the editorial boards of Research in Higher Education and the ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Reports series.

At the Institute of Higher Education, he teaches doctoral level courses on organization and governance of higher education, qualitative research, and the organizational and administration of intercollegiate athletics. He has also taught courses in higher education on research, law, history, and administration at Penn and UMKC, and has taught sports law.

Before entering academe, Toma practiced law for five years and was admitted to state and federal bars in New York, Connecticut, and Michigan.

Education: Ph.D. University of Michigan; M.A. and J.D. Michigan; and B.A. James Madison College, Michigan State University.