Ronne Patrick Turner has been appointed the new vice provost of admissions, effective this July.

Turner currently serves as the associate vice president of enrollment and dean of admissions at Northeastern University in Boston. The appointment comes after John Berg, the current vice chancellor for admissions, announced his retirement in October.

For Washington University, Turner’s appointment signals a continued emphasis on socioeconomic diversity, specifically through the percentage of Pell Grant students at the University. Last year, the University pledged to meet 13 percent Pell eligibility by 2020, and Provost Holden Thorp said that Turner will be instrumental in those efforts.

“It was very much on everyone’s mind to find people who had a track record of helping low-income students get into college,” Thorp said.

That track record reaches back 15 years at Northeastern, as Turner has built the school into a more selective, nationally focused institution while maintaining an above average percentage of Pell eligible students. According to a 2015 study by the Education Trust, 14.2 percent of Northeastern undergraduate students received Pell Grants, whereas only 6.2 percent of students at Washington University did. Northeastern currently ranks above several top-ranking private universities in percentage of Pell Grants, including Yale University, Princeton University and Duke University.

Northeastern, however, enrolls a similar percentage of underrepresented minorities as Washington University. Northeastern enrolls 10.9 percent and Washington University enrolls 11.2 percent underrepresented minorities.

With socioeconomic diversity in mind, Turner said her first goal will ultimately be to get her bearings at the University.

“Getting to know students and understanding the student experience is critically important for someone in my role in order to accomplish the institutional goals,” Turner said.

While Turner will not be involved with the admissions process for 2016—which is still under Berg’s purview—she will begin working on the 2017 process when she arrives in July. Turner said that building upon the Washington University admissions team, as well as involving more members of the campus community in the admissions process, will be a focus for her.

“It takes the entire University as well as a strong and well-built team in order to accomplish the institutional goals,” Turner said. “So continuing to have clear communication, inviting people into the process…we need students in the process. We need faculty and staff in the process.”

The hiring process for the vice chancellor position began last fall, when current Vice Chancellor John Berg announced his retirement. Thorp said that Turner was the search committee’s top choice.

“We had excellent candidates; we had many candidates who would have been excellent choices, and Ronne [Turner] stood out among that group,” Thorp said.

Along with the appointment of Lori White as vice chancellor for student affairs in 2015, Turner’s arrival points towards a heavier focus on bringing national best practices to Washington University. Both Turner and White are chief members of national organizations in their respective fields—Turner as College Board’s chair of the National Guidance and Admission Assembly and White as NASPA’s (Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education) chair-elect.

“We’ve kind of gone through these transitions where we’ve taken some things we were doing here and exposed them to the best practices from around the country,” Thorp said. “That’s been a good thing in student affairs, and it’ll probably be a good thing in admissions.”