Betsy Barefoot is a native of North Carolina. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Music Education from Duke University and Master's and Doctoral Degrees in Higher Education from the College of William and Mary.

Currently, Dr. Barefoot serves as Co-Director and Senior Scholar for the Policy Center on the First Year of College located in western North Carolina in the community of Brevard. In her work at the Policy Center, Dr. Barefoot is directly involved in the development of instruments and strategies to assess the first year of college. In addition, she conducts seminars on the first-year experience across the United States and in other countries and assists other colleges and universities in implementing and evaluating first-year programs.

Prior to assuming this position, Dr. Barefoot served for 11 years as Co-Director for Research and Publications in the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina. In this position, she engaged in ongoing research on first-year programming in American higher education and co-edited a number of publications including the Journal of The First-Year Experience, the First-Year Experience Newsletter, and a series of single-topic monographs. While at the University of South Carolina, Dr. Barefoot also served as a clinical faculty member in the University of South Carolina's College of Education and taught graduate courses in Principles of College Teaching, Contemporary Trends and Issues in Higher Education, a special topics seminar on The First-Year Experience, as well as the University 101 first-year seminar. Dr. Barefoot was also involved in acquiring grant funds, designing, and implementing a campus-wide program to provide training in methods of college teaching for graduate teaching assistants at the University of South Carolina.

Dr. Barefoot has authored or co-authored numerous books and articles on the topic of the first year of college including the Jossey-Bass books, Challenging and Supporting the First-Year Student: A Handbook for Improving the First Year of College, Achieving and Sustaining Institutional Excellence for the First College Year, and another soon-to-be-released book, The First Year and Beyond: Rethinking the Challenge of Collegiate Transition.