Consuella Askew

Dr. Consuella Askew is an active and creative leader with a demonstrated history of guiding libraries successfully through transformational change. An accomplished administrator, librarian, and scholar, Askew has published, and presented widely on library leadership, developing a culture of assessment in academic libraries, and strategically adapting library services to meet evolving user needs.

In her previous role as associate university librarian at Rutgers University–Newark, Askew led the John Cotton Dana Library through a multimillion-dollar renovation as well as a successful organizational restructuring to encourage innovation, community engagement, and increased operational excellence and efficiency. She was instrumental in the John Cotton Dana Library's $13M renovation and construction project that added more student study and instructions spaces and a permanent home for the university's P3 Collaboratory for Pedagogy, Professional Development, and Publicly-Engaged Scholarship. Dedicated to advancing Rutgers–Newark’s core values and helping plan for its success, she served on the campus’s Commission on Diversity and Transformation and  cochaired its Strategic Planning Anchor Institution Action Group.

She is the current Vice Chair or the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Learning Network Committee and is a member representative on the BTAA Libraries director's group. An active contributor to the academic library profession, Askew is a member of the editorial board for the award-winning portal: Libraries and the Academy, an executive committee member for the Virtual Academic Library Environment (VALE) of New Jersey organization. She is a past chair of the Library Leadership and Management Association (now known as CORE) Assessment Community of Practice section.

Askew’s career in libraries spans nearly 30 years, beginning in school and public libraries. Prior to her time at Rutgers, she served as the associate dean for public services at Florida International University Libraries and held leadership positions at the City University of New York as the inaugural Chief Librarian for the Graduate School of Journalism (now the Craig Newark Graduate School of Journalism) and Medgar Evers College. She was a member of the research and development team for the Association of Research Libraries LibQUAL+ program. An industry-standard tool used to assess user perceptions of library service quality that has been adopted by over 1,300 libraries across the world, including Rutgers.

Askew holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Spelman College and a master’s degree in library and information studies from the University of North Carolina. She earned her doctoral degree in higher education from Florida International University. She is also an alumna of multiple prestigious library leadership programs including the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), Harvard Leadership Institute and UCLA’s Library Senior Fellows Program, the longest-standing formal leadership development program for librarians in the country.