The Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Health Sciences named a new assistant vice provost for student development, a new position at IU.
Katie Kearns, who worked at IU’s Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning for 13 years, will now be helping graduate students develop professionally and connecting them to resources on campus.
“There are plenty of research, writing and other resources, but sometimes students have trouble finding them,” she said. “Because they’re not all in the same place.”
She will also be working with academic units, student organizations and postdoctoral trainees.
One of her main goals, she said, is to help graduate students hone their skills and show how they can find careers outside of higher education.
This hits close to home for Kearns because when she was getting her Ph.D. at the University of Georgia, most of her peers were planning to become faculty members, she said.
“I want to show students all the careers they can do with their variety of skills,” Kearns said.
She said she hopes to organize more panels — specifically with IU alumni — and job fairs to promote non-academic career paths, as well as design programs to focus on student satisfaction and retention.
David Daleke, the vice provost for graduate education and health sciences, said he has been working on creating this new position for several years to create more support for graduate students and postdoctoral trainees.
“Postdocs often fall between the cracks of graduate students and faculty,” he said.
Daleke said Kearns is a good fit for the position because of her experience at the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning.
“She has shown she can successfully work and connect with graduate students,” he said.
Kearns started at her position Jan. 22. She is still working out all the details, she said, but one thing she knows is that she wants graduate students to feel like they belong on campus.
“One thing we want to ask is, do they see themselves represented?” she said. “We want to figure out what works well for them and what is missing.”
