UMSON director of academic administration earns Doctor of Business Administration degree.
Please join us in congratulating Angie Hines, DBA, director of academic administration in the Office of the Academic Deans at UMSON, on successfully defending her dissertation and completing her Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) program at the University of Maryland Global Campus. She defended her dissertation, Legitimacy Under Pressure: Sustaining Accreditation Compliance in U.S. Higher Education Institutions, on March 9.
Through a mixed-method study, Hines examined how U.S. colleges and universities sustain accreditation readiness under federal regulatory pressure. Her research found that compliance capacity often appears stable in structure but remains fragile in practice, particularly between accreditation cycles. While accreditation serves as the formal mechanism for accountability, her findings show that durable readiness depends on embedding compliance routines into everyday practice.
The study also identified differences between the perspectives of senior leaders and frontline implementers. Leaders often emphasized visible structures and stronger institutional capacity, while implementers more often described accreditation work as reactive and vulnerable to breakdowns when daily processes relied on tacit knowledge and workarounds.
Her research culminated in the development of an Accreditation Readiness Diagnostic Toolkit designed to help institutions identify gaps and strengthen continuous readiness over time. She plans to publish her research and toolkit at a later date.
Hines joined the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) in 2013 as an academic coordinator and has served in the UMSON Office of the Academic Deans throughout her tenure. During that time, she earned her Bachelor of Arts, Master of Business Administration, and DBA degrees, along with professional certificates in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace, Human Resource Management, Project Management, and Management Foundation.
Throughout her time at UMB, Hines has been recognized for innovation, efficiency, and leadership, particularly during UMSON’s accreditation process. She was named the UMB Employee of the Month in 2018 and 2024 and also received UMSON Staff Excellence Awards in 2015 and 2023, along with the Dean Jane M. Kirschling Excellence in Leadership Award in 2016.