About Kelly Mack, PhD

Kelly Mack is a veteran of the academy and a distinguished leader in STEM higher education reform. As Vice President for Undergraduate STEM Education and Executive Director of Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), Dr. Mack creates and oversees initiatives aimed at informing and influencing national policy and practice to transform undergraduate STEM teaching and learning. Through a blended focus on positivity, gratitude, biofeedback, and mindfulness, Dr. Mack designs professional and leadership development spaces for STEM faculty that offer opportunities for fully reflecting on, considering, and managing academic workplace choices, actions, and responses to complex situations with confidence and vigor. Before joining AAC&U, Dr. Mack was the Senior Program Director for the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE Program and Professor of Biology at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, where she taught courses in Physiology and Endocrinology for nearly two decades.

Dr. Mack’s current body of work emphasizes culturally responsive undergraduate STEM teaching, introspection, and systems-level institutional change. She uses her extensive training as a physiologist to bring faculty, administrators, and policy makers into a productive and dynamic equilibrium with higher education where the co-creation of new patterns of thinking and behavior can be cultivated. Her leadership in undergraduate STEM reform has led to significant increases in the capacity of faculty to implement culturally responsive pedagogies, as well as major shifts in the ways in which leadership development for STEM faculty is delivered and the expansion of both physical and virtual convening platforms for knowledge generation, exchange, and dissemination within and outside of higher education.

Recognized as a national thought leader in higher education, Dr. Mack’s work has been highlighted in Diverse Magazine and U.S. News and World Report. Currently, she is an advisor to numerous NSF-funded institutional reform initiatives and is a member of the National Academies Roundtable on Systemic Change in Undergraduate STEM Education. She is also co-founder and chair of the board of the Society of STEM Women of Color, Inc., as well as founding editor of the Journal of STEM Leadership and Broadening Participation, and editor of the ADVANCE Journal.

Currently, Kelly serves as the Vice President for Undergraduate STEM Education and Executive Director of Project Kaleidoscope, AAC&U