Dr. Steve Ernst is Associate Provost of Quality and Innovation at APUS. In this role, he oversees course development and maintenance, course materials, Trefry Library operations, and academic requirements for instructional technologies. He has been with APUS since November 2023.
Dr. Ernst has served in several leadership roles with universities and education technology companies. He is a former tenured professor (plant biology), dean, and vice president who has extensive experience managing the development of courses, programs, and course materials for higher education, workforce, and corporate training.
Prior to joining APUS, Dr. Ernst was Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at LearningMate. In his first administrative role in higher education, he co-founded and managed what quickly became the largest higher education online program in Colorado, at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Ernst was associate professor at the University of Nebraska where he oversaw research in plant biology and created and taught undergraduate and graduate courses in plant biology and signal transduction for over 12 years.
Dr. Ernst also co-founded and sold an adaptive learning company and is an inventor of an adaptive learning patent.
Dr. Ernst holds a Ph.D. in Genetics from Michigan State University and earned both his M.A. and B.A. from Colorado State University.