Dear LMU Community:
I am pleased to announce that Kat Weaver, Ph.D., has been promoted to vice provost for Research, Professional Development, and Online Learning. Kat has served as associate provost for research and professional development since 2018; online learning initiatives were added to her responsibilities in early 2020. Her thoughtful leadership and advocacy for students and faculty have greatly benefited the university, and I highlight some of her many accomplishments below.
- Kat and her team in the Office for Research and Sponsored Projects (ORSP) have elevated LMU’s success in garnering external funding by establishing an infrastructure for statistical analysis, grant writing, and proposal submission. Faculty who participated in the annual Proposal Writing Academy have won a combined total of $7.3 million in funding for their research. Just last year, the ORSP recorded a 39 percent increase in extramural dollars awarded, from $8.7 million in FY21 to $12.1 million in FY22, as well as a 31 percent increase in the number of grant proposals submitted and a 69 percent increase in total dollars requested to $39.9 million, an all-time high for LMU. Ever collaborative, Kat has partnered with the University Research Committee, Post Award Administration and Accounting, and University Finance to increase LMU’s research and development resources, as measured by the National Science Foundation’s annual HERD rankings of institutional expenditures. Since her arrival, LMU has seen a 62 percent increase in research and development expenditures from $7.9 million in 2018 to $12.8 million in 2021.
- Through the Office of Research and Creative Arts, Kat has overseen increased support for student research including the creation of a new Research Learning Community in 2019, which provides students with crucial training for independent and faculty-mentored research in their disciplines. Under her leadership, LMU received a $1.3 million McNair Scholars grant in 2022 to facilitate faculty-student research, ushering in our next five years of helping underrepresented students gain acceptances to top-tier Ph.D. programs.
- Kat oversaw the expansion of programming in the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE), including workshops, faculty learning communities, and LMU faculty fellows focused on anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion; universal design for learning; global-local opportunities; the Salon Series; and active learning pedagogy. Many of these collaborations with ITS, DEI, Mission and Ministry, Global Local Affairs, Faculty Senate, and others were crucial following the murder of George Floyd and the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. The Office of Online Learning’s eFaculty Certification program trained 700 faculty and staff in remote instructional pedagogies and strategies and provided hundreds of workshops and consultations that supported faculty in reimagining course delivery during the pandemic. The Office of Online Learning also successfully developed and launched the new hybrid J.D. program at LMU Loyola Law School in fall 2022, welcoming a cohort of more than 40 law students into a fully redesigned, student-centered legal degree approved by the American Bar Association.
- Kat has also facilitated the promotions of 97 tenure-line faculty since 2018 through her care and support of each constituency involved in the annual year-long process.
Please join me in congratulating Vice Provost Weaver on her many successes and in thanking her for the leadership she has already provided. I am grateful Kat will continue serving in this essential role at Loyola Marymount University.
Sincerely,
Thomas Poon, Ph.D.
Executive Vice President and Provost
