Karen Riley is the new dean of the Morgridge College of Education.
University of Denver Associate Professor Karen Riley has been named dean of the Morgridge College of Education effective immediately. Riley, a Morgridge College faculty member who works in the area of child, family and school psychology, has served as interim dean since June 2013. A search committee formed this spring advanced her selection as dean.
Riley joined the University as an assistant professor in 2004 and was chair of the Educational Research Policy and Practice program from 2011 to 2013. Between 2010 and 2012, she put her leadership skills to work as faculty director of the University’s Fisher Early Learning Center.
“The Morgridge College of Education has made great progress during the past year, and our stellar faculty and staff will allow us to continue to grow and develop,” Riley says. “The Morgridge College is poised to become one of the prominent graduate colleges of education in the country.
“We have created a strategic plan to guide us operationally, but it will be our innovative thinking, teaching and research practices that will distinguish us,” she continues. “Our research and the students we prepare will serve as our legacy long into the future. I embrace the challenge of leading Morgridge into this next exciting chapter.”
After completing her PhD in educational psychology from the University of Denver in 1998, Riley embarked on a productive research career that has won her international acclaim. Her work on fragile X syndrome has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, Novartis Pharmaceutical, the Colorado Department of Education, and other agencies and foundations.
“Karen Riley has excellent credentials and an impressive track record of teaching and research distinction, as well as academic leadership,” Provost Gregg Kvistad wrote in a letter to the DU community. “Her candidacy received extraordinarily strong support from her colleagues at the college, other faculty members across the institution and the many administrators with whom a dean interacts at the University.”