Lauri Dietz
Lauri joined the Northwestern community in January 2023 as the Director of Pedagogy and Curricular Development. She is excited to bring her leadership experience developing inclusive communities of teaching and learning excellence to the Searle Center as she connects and collaborates with partners from across the university.
She earned a doctorate in English Renaissance Literature from the University of Notre Dame and began her career as a faculty member at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. As a faculty member, she had the opportunity to direct her first writing center, which ignited her interests in connecting with students, faculty, and staff from across the university to encourage interdisciplinary conversations and learning. From there, she became the first director of the University Center for Writing-based Learning at DePaul University, where she centered values of collaboration, reflection, and revision to foster of culture of writing and the teaching of writing. Prior to Northwestern, she directed the Introductory Seminars program at Stanford University, where she oversaw a curriculum of over 200 courses taught by faculty from all Stanford’s schools and from over 60 different departments.
Throughout her career, Lauri has prioritized creating spaces of ongoing learning and reflection for students, faculty, and staff. Her scholarly interests have focused on integrating ePortfolios as a high impact practice in curricular and co-curricular contexts, creating systemic change in higher education that centers diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, and bringing visibility to the dynamic pedagogical and epistemological methods in the Humanities. She is also a co-founding editor of the Journal for Undergraduate Research in the Humanities with her longtime collaborator Dr. Lara Karpenko.