Leadership

I am an anthropologist and higher education leader passionate about supporting faculty, cultivating successful institutional strategic change processes, and creating educational systems where students graduate ready to pursue rich, equity-minded futures deeply informed by liberal arts training and sensibilities. My research and leadership aim to cultivate creative, collaborative, new ways of thinking about institutions and systems—deeply grounded in anthropological methods, theories, and knowledge of different ways of being and thinking, in the present and the past. I am driven by processes that enable good work; the cultivation of a community of trust, respect, and belonging; and interdisciplinarity. My leadership is steeped in the politics of identity; in questions of equity, access, and power; in an understanding of who can and cannot speak in different contexts (and action to mitigate any silencing in the system).

Olin College is a residential, undergraduate, engineering college that provides a hands-on engineering education grounded in human-centered design. Olin has 350 students, 39 full-time faculty members, and no departments. With a vision for “Engineering for Everyone,” Olin seeks to change who identifies as engineers and what counts as engineering. In a 2018 MIT-commissioned report on “The Global State of the Art in Engineering Education,” Olin was ranked first, just above MIT, in the list of “current leaders in engineering education.”

There there are no departments at Olin, the Dean of Faculty role includes a number of activities often held by department chairs. The responsibilities in this role included the following:

• Participate in the Academic Life Leadership Team (ALLT), comprising the Provost, Deans, and Associate Deans in Academic Life. "Academic Life" is an integrated unit of Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Admission and Financial Aid, and External Partnerships and Programs. As a team: ensure continuity, coordination, communication, and efficiency in the ongoing work of Academic Life; launch and empower teams to translate new institutional directions into on-the-ground action; reset the post-pandemic culture to align with both a new strategic vision and a new cultural vision. Within that team, Dean of Faculty special foci included: identify directions and make decisions, lead initiatives to provide support to other members of the group, and build bridges and trust.

• Supervise and support nearly 60 direct reports, including full-time faculty (39), adjuncts, visitors, and select Academic Life staff (including in the library, shops, and labs; some through "dotted line" supervision).

• Collaborate with the Provost to set hiring priorities for faculty and Academic Life staff aligned with strategic needs and budgetary considerations.

• Oversee hiring of faculty and Academic Life staff, including strategic advising and operational support of hiring committees. Hire and support new faculty, aligned with the Olin College "Engineering for Everyone" strategic vision of equity and access. During Dean of Faculty tenure, hired seven faculty on long-term tracks, and roughly a dozen faculty on visiting or adjunct appointments.

• Support the work of faculty to create and sustain transformative educational experiences focused on engineering, access, and equity. 

• Support the growth and development of faculty and systems to support interdisciplinary work and deep disciplinary-focused work.

• Provide mediation and conflict resolution support, among faculty, staff, and students (as it pertains to faculty roles).

• Create and support an onboarding (partnering with HR) and mentoring system for new faculty, building on systems created by predecessors.

• Provide developmental support to faculty, including feedback on teaching effectiveness (via course visits), mentoring partnerships, peer-to-peer sharing/education, and support for grant/fellowship applications.

• Provide annual reviews (evaluative and developmental) of faculty performance, partnering with Institutional Research to improve data collection and communication related to teaching evaluations.

• Collaborate with the Provost to set agendas for Academic Life Meetings (for all college employees) in rotation with faculty meetings (weekly rotation).

• Set the agenda for and lead faculty meetings (roughly every two weeks).

• Communicate effectively in meetings and in writing to students, faculty, staff, and leadership.

• Assign faculty to service roles in the College, aligning faculty goals and the college's needs. In partnership with Provost, create and implement a "Faculty Partners" program to embed faculty in staff work domains for improved partnership, transparency, and communication (e.g., partners placed in admission, advising, communications). Oversee committee and service progress.

• Oversee and provide strategic and operational support for faculty governance committees, formed via nomination and selection process. This involves regular communication with chairs: Appointments and Search; Reappointment and Promotion; and the Academic Recommendation Board (the latter in partnership with the Provost).

• Support faculty candidates for reappointment and promotion, explaining the process at the start, providing process updates, and sharing results and developmental support at the conclusion of the process.

• Communicate with external evaluators for reappointment and promotion requests, representing the college to outside parties.

• Make recommendations to the President regarding reappointments and promotions. 

• Create processes and events for adjuncts and visiting faculty to feel welcome.

• Collaborate with the Provost to create initiatives to advance Olin's 2022 Strategic Plan.

• Support faculty-led curricular change work to advance Olin's 2022 Strategic Plan.

• Decide on agenda for and lead faculty retreats (in January, May, and/or August each year).

• Liaise with the Board of Trustees on curricular and faculty topics; represent the interests of the faculty to the Board of Trustees (particularly the Board’s Academic Life Committee).

• Strategize with relevant ALLT colleagues on budgeting, staffing, and space use for the academic program.

• Collaborate with the Provost on financial decisions including faculty salaries (based on an equity model); summer funding; sabbatical requests; and budget for teaching, conferences, and research.

• Collaborate with the Provost to assess and develop policy on teaching load and assignments (in light of co-teaching and variable class sizes).  

• Collaborate with ALLT colleagues to approve and support teaching assignments and scheduling and sabbatical requests (considering impact on teaching coverage).

• Liaise with Human Resources on topics including varieties of faculty leave requests, hiring process, onboarding program, and employment regulations compliance.

• Liaise with fundraising personnel on campus to generate ideas for strategic fundraising.

• Promote faculty success through effective communication with the Office of Strategic Communications.

• With Olin’s VP of Finance and Administration and an HR associate director, co-lead the College Council, a group to facilitate communication across the College leadership.

• With Dean of Student Affairs, co-lead the fall Convocation, and the related Summer Book Program (selecting the reading, convening and leading discussion groups, creating discussion questions and engagements).

• Represent Olin’s leadership to external visiting teams and at college-wide events; this included reading graduate names at the 2023 graduation.

• Represent Olin’s leadership at events with families and alums; this included visiting alums in California and delivering the formal College welcome to first-year students and their families at Orientation in 2021 and 2022.

• Participate in the "Employee Experience" sub-team of the DEI Champions group, a Strategic Plan initiative to create conditions for thriving among all members of the Olin community (aligned with Olin's Engineering for Everyone vision).

• Serve as Olin representative to the EDGE Consortium, in partnership with Olin President Gilda Barabino. Representative to this group of women presidents and deans of the nation’s leading research universities and schools of engineering, working collaboratively to transform semiconductor-related education to be more accessible and aligned with industry workforce needs. An initiative in response to the CHIPS and Science Act. (January to August 2023.) https://www.edgeconsortium.org/ .