About Me

Dr. Alison LaLond Wyant serves as the founding director of Arcadia's Office of Social Impact & Innovation. In this role, Alison is coordinating, amplifying, and expanding University efforts to serve the public good and promote social entrepreneurship and civic engagement. She also directs the Arcadia Civic Scholars program.

Alison first joined Arcadia in 2012. Working in the College of Global Studies, Alison oversaw curriculum development at Arcadia’s 11 centers around the world.

Before joining Arcadia, Alison worked at the University of Pennsylvania, serving most recently as the Stouffer College House Dean. Alison had also worked for several other mission-driven offices at Penn: The Greenfield Intercultural Center, The Netter Center for Community Partnerships, and Civic House.

Before her career in higher education, Alison worked in direct service organizations in Baltimore, Maryland, including Habitat for Humanity, where she served a term through AmeriCorps.

Alison is a strong advocate of teaching and learning environments that promote the development of students’ social consciousness and leadership capacity. She has taught courses on urban community engagement, service-learning pedagogy, multiculturalism in higher education, and global connections. Alison enjoys encouraging students both to bring their academic work to bear on real-world problems and to let lived and observed experiences influence their scholarly pursuits.

Originally from Massachusetts, Alison earned her B.A. in Political Science from Loyola University in Maryland and her M.S.Ed. and Ed.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation was about Penn's relationship with its neighboring public high school. Her ongoing questions of interest are about what's possible when institutions collaborate with their communities toward social change and how best to spur young people toward civic engagement. 

Alison and her family reside in Glenside, and the remaining four of her top five favorite places in the world (so far) are Galway, Ireland; Cascais, Portugal; Cape Town, South Africa; and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.