Dr. Sam Miller is the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at Western Carolina University.
He attended the University of Alabama where he earned his undergraduate degree in human resources management and his master’s degree in business administration. He received his doctorate in education from the University of Virginia.
Dr. Miller grew up in Alabama and currently lives in Jackson County.
Prior to joining Western’s staff in 2007, Dr. Miller held several other positions regarding student affairs. He was the hall director at the University of Alabama, worked for the honors system and student media at the University of Virginia and was the Associate Vice President for Student Affairs at the University of Connecticut.
As the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Dr. Miller is very involved with student life. On a daily basis, he meets for several hours with parents, students, student organization leaders and the administration. When he meets with the administration, he represents the students and their issues.
Dr. Miller absolutely loves his job and comments that he is “very lucky and couldn’t see himself doing anything else.”
He considers the advantages of his job to be many. He likes having a positive impact on the lives of students and enjoys helping them in any way he can. Another advantage is meeting incredible students, following them up and seeing how successful they have become at what they do. He believes the only disadvantages of his job are not being able to spend as much time as he would like to with students. And when tragic instances happen to students and their families, he doesn’t like to see them hurting.
Dr. Miller spends many nights and weekends at the university, but in his free time he enjoys spending time with his three young children and taking them to their activities such as rehearsals, t-ball and soccer practice. He has an interesting hobby in which he researches college movies. He is interested in seeing how the administration is portrayed and actually has his own website containing over 900 college movies that date as far back as the silent film era.
His website can be found at collegefilmsdb.com.
