Search Committee

Astrida Orle Tantillo
tantillo@uic.edu
Search Committee Chair
Dean and Professor
History and Germanic Studies
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Astrida Orle Tantillo is Dean of UIC’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences which serves over 10,000 students at the undergraduate and graduate level with more than 350 faculty members.  Under her leadership since 2010, she has heavily invested in student success and the strength of the faculty, increased external funding, and launched new curricula. In addition to her deanship, she has been a professor of Germanic studies and history at UIC for over 20 years. She previously served as the inaugural director of the College’s School of Literatures, Cultural Studies and Linguistics, where she oversaw six academic departments. Dean Tantillo’s scholarly interests are in 18^th-century literature (Goethe in particular), culture, and history of science. She is the author of three books, Goethe’s Modernisms (Continuum, 2010), The Will to Create: Goethe’s Philosophy of Nature (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002), and Goethe’s Elective Affinities and the Critics (Camden House, 2001). She is the former president of the Goethe Society of North America and the founding editor of the book series (co-sponsored by the Goethe Society of North America and Bucknell University Press) on “Goethe and His Age.”

Rosa Cabrera
cabrerar@uic.edu
Director
Latino Cultural Center
Office of Diversity

Rosa M. Cabrera, Ph.D, is the director of the Rafael Cintrón Ortiz Latino Cultural Center at UIC. Her research and praxis work focuses on understanding environmental and climate change problems as a social issue within larger systems of power and privilege; scrutinizing the role of social and environmental justice in museums and cultural centers; and using methodologies for public engagement that are centered on the arts and humanities to harness first voice stories and community knowledge to create culturally relevant and place-based solutions. Cabrera is an adjunct faculty in the Department of Anthropology, Graduate College, Latin American and Latino Studies Program, and Museum and Exhibition Studies Program. She is also a Keller Science Action Center Associate at the Field Museum.

Nancy Freitag
nfreitag@uic.edu
Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs
Professor
Microbiology
College of Medicine

Dr. Freitag’s research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms by which pathogenic bacteria cause disease as well as the host immune responses that limit infection. The NIH has continuously funded her laboratory since 1997 and in 2016 she was inducted as a Fellow into the American Academy of Microbiology. Dr. Freitag’s teaching has been recognized by several awards, including three Golden Apples. She has published over seventy peer-reviewed publications and holds two patents. In 2017 she became a University Scholar.

Dr. Freitag has served on numerous institutional committees, including three terms on the University Promotion and Tenure Committee. This past year she graduated as a Fellow in the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) program, a national year-long fellowship program for women that enhances leadership skills including training in program development, conflict resolution, negotiation, and decision making skills. She obtained her Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from UCLA and served on the faculty at Wayne State University and the University of Washington before joining UIC in 2006.

Erica Goldman
egoldman@uic.edu
Assistant to the Provost
Office of the Provost

Erica Goldman has been employed with the Office of the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs since May of 2018. Calendar maintenance has been her primary function. She also serves as a receptionist for the unit. Erica is currently working BA in Social Psychology. Her anticipated date of graduation is May 2022.

Joe Kearney
kearney@uic.edu
Chief of Staff to the Chancellor
Office of the Chancellor

Joe Kearney currently serves as Chief of Staff to the Chancellor. Before this role, Joe served most recently as Assistant Dean for Strategic Initiatives at UIC School of Law. In this role, and, in previous roles at the law school, he managed a variety of strategic projects, including the negotiations for the merger of the school into UIC and the transition process that followed. Prior to joining the law school, he was a Staff Attorney for the Illinois Appellate Court and Program Manager for the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor at the School of Business of Loyola University and the School of Public Service at DePaul University. He received his B.S. degree in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, his M.S. degree in Public Service Management from DePaul University and his J.D. degree from UIC School of Law.

Kelcie O'Shea
kgauen3@uic.edu
Executive Assistant to the Provost
Office of the Provost

Kelcie O’Shea is the executive assistant to the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. She joined the Provost’s team in 2011 as an undergraduate student employee and has since served in several roles for the office. O’Shea received her BA from UIC in 2014 and her MPA from UIS in 2020.

Darryl Pendleton
dpendle@uic.edu
Executive Director of the Urban Health Program
Associate Dean for Student & Diversity Affairs
Clinical Associate Professor
College of Dentistry

Dr. Pendleton joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry (UIC) in November, 2002. He currently serves as the Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Diversity Affairs, Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatric Dentistry and Executive Director for the University’s Urban Health Program. The Urban Health Program is the University Recruitment and Retention program for underrepresented minority students in the Health Science Colleges. In addition, Dr. Pendleton serves as an Honors College Faculty Fellow, he Chairs the College of Dentistry’s Admissions Committee, Diversity Advisory Committee, Student- Faculty- Staff Relations Committee and Student Conduct Committee.

Gerald "Gerry" Smith
gasmith@uic.edu
Director
Minority Affairs
College of Engineering

Gerry is the Director of Minority Affairs and Director of the Equity and Inclusion Engineering Program (EIEP) in the College of Engineering.  Responsibilities in Minority Affairs are to manage, collaborate, create strategies, and engage with organizations across the UIC campus to enhance processes and programs to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion for the past 11 years.  Responsibilities in the EIEP program are to identify, attract, advise and mentor undergraduate and graduate students on their academic performance, measure student success and assist in identifying their future career opportunities for underrepresented students.   Gerry’s goal is for his students to successfully complete their challenging course work and achieve their engineering degrees across all the engineering disciplines to become innovators and change the world. Gerry has led the College’s recruitment efforts to grow the enrollments over 100+% during his 10-year tenure and earn the distinction of the most diverse engineering program enrollment demographic with a minority student 28% representation.

Gerry has 33+ years of IBM Corporation experience as an executive who led consultants, sales and system engineers and staff personnel during his career, along with 20+ years of involvement on the advisory board with UIC College of Engineering and community organizations prior to coming to UIC.  The combination of business, management, technical and academic advisory experiences has provided the College of Engineering’s minority and all students a wide range of mentoring and counseling to achieve their goals to graduate.

Catherine Vincent
vincentc@uic.edu
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Associate Professor
Women, Child, & Family Health Science
College of Nursing

Dr. Catherine Vincent is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Nursing. She is the past Chair of the UIC Senate Executive Committee and Secretary of the UIC Faculty Senate.

Dr. Vincent’s research addresses the challenge of unrelieved children’s pain. Her program of research has focused on increasing children’s pain relief by discovering what prevents nurses and parents from providing children with adequate pain medication. In prior research, she has examined relationships of nurses' knowledge, attitudes, analgesic administration practices, and levels of children's pain. She studied how nurses cognitively represent children's pain and how these representations could influence behavior. Building on her prior research, she has developed Relieve Children’s Pain (RCP), an Internet- and theory-based multimedia educational intervention for nurses which addresses the validity of pain intensity measurement and analgesic use.

An expert teacher, Dr. Vincent has taught nursing for over 35 years, currently teaching Theory and Theory Development for Nursing Research for PhD students