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Christine E. Kasper, who served the past four years as dean of the University of New Mexico’s College of Nursing, has been named the new dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing after a highly competitive national search.
On Jan. 1, 2023, Kasper will replace Jacqueline Dunbar-Jacob, dean and Distinguished Service Professor of Nursing, whose leadership and dedication over the last 21 years have positioned Pitt Nursing as one of the top nursing schools nationwide.
“Dr. Kasper has been chosen from a pool of exceptionally qualified leaders identified through a national search,” said Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and the John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine. “I believe Dr. Kasper is superbly qualified to lead Pitt’s School of Nursing on a continued path of success, and I look forward to working with her closely.”
In her role at UNM, Kasper leads a nursing college with more than 1,100 students. In the previous three years, enrollment in UNM’s College of Nursing increased by 35%.
Before joining UNM, Dean Kasper served as a senior nurse executive in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Nursing Services. In that post, she advised the chief nursing officer on academics, research and policy and was a professor in the Daniel K. Inouye Graduate School of Nursing at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.
“I am mindful of the unique and essential role that a highly ranked and world-class major research university such as the University of Pittsburgh plays in its mission as a model public university serving the state, the nation and international communities,” Kasper said. “The University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing has long served as one of the preeminent elite nursing schools in the country. Over its long and distinguished history, it has been a leader and innovator in the profession's education, scholarship and research.”
Kasper is the current editor of the Annual Review of Nursing Research and was the founding editor of Biological Research for Nursing. She was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Nurses in 1994, elected as a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine in 1995 and elected to the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame, Sigma Theta Tau International in 2015.
She has more than 200 national and international peer-reviewed and invited publications, books and presentations to her credit.
Kasper received her undergraduate degree in nursing from the University of Evansville, a master’s in nursing from Rush University and a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she studied nursing and exercise physiology. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Rush University in physiology and biophysics, she served as a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of California, Los Angeles. She also held the M. Adelaide Nutting Research Chair at Johns Hopkins University.
— Jared Stonesifer