Kristi Upson-Saia serves as the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs. In this role she is the point person for the Dean’s Office on all faculty and departmental matters. Related to personnel, she oversees faculty searches and hiring, onboarding new faculty, faculty start-up funds, collective bargaining with non-tenure track faculty, and the Joint Labor Management Committee. She works closely with the Associate Dean for Curriculum Affairs and members of the Academic Planning Committee on the allocation of new faculty positions and recruitment of faculty through the Target of Opportunity hiring program. She manages course offerings, faculty teaching loads, sabbaticals, early career leaves, and she works with HR on family, medical, and personal leaves. She oversees faculty development efforts, managing faculty research funds and coordinating internal research grant and fellowship applications. She partners with the Sponsored Research Office to support individual faculty grant/fellowship applications and partners with the Office of Strategic Initiatives and Institutional Advancement to pursue funding from Foundations. She works closely with the Center for Teaching Excellence and Center for Research and Scholarship Faculty Directors to provide programming and resources for pedagogical development and research support, and she mentors individual faculty through the tenure and promotion process. She works with the Dean of the College, Facilities, Finance, and Operations departments to set the priorities for academic facilities and to coordinate renovation and building projects. Finally, as needed, she manages conflict resolution.
Upson-Saia is the David B. and Mary H. Gamble Professor of Religious Studies and her most recent research has been on the history of medicine, health, and healing in the ancient Mediterranean.