A New Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences

A New Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences By Gina Stafford

Pamela Riggs-Gelasco, an accomplished scholar, award-winning educator and leader at the

College of Charleston, will join the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences on July 1. Riggs-Gelasco earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Albion College in Albion, Michigan; a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and she completed a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She started her career at College of Charleston in 1998 and has been a professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the College of Charleston since 2012.

Among her accomplishments at Charleston, she collaborated with their Development Office and multiple private donors to create six new, endowed research stipends and scholarships. She has also been an active builder of public-private partnerships, including one with a local company to conduct research on re-purposing chemical waste.

An advocate for educational excellence in the sciences at the undergraduate level, she won two sequential grant awards from the

Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Each award included complex interdisciplinary programming with elements that enhanced both Charleston’s strategic plan and its Quality Enhancement Plan. She also won research funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, the State of South Carolina, and the American Chemical Society.

She has twice been recognized by Charleston’s School of Science and Math with its annual Distinguished Achievement

Award for scientific work and leadership on multiple grants and the prestigious Camille and

Henry Dreyfus Foundation named her a HenryDreyfus Teacher-Scholar, a national recognition in the chemical sciences that included an award to support her research and teaching.

“Dr. Riggs-Gelasco has built a strong career with professional priorities that mirror those of UTC,” said UTC Provost Jerold Hale. “She embraces the teacherscholar model, has a strong record of scholarship – including external research funding, and she has been intentional about including students as collaborators and co-authors on her work.

She has also been a consummate campus citizen and has led a large, complex and highly successful academic department. She has cultivated interdisciplinary collaborations and has the sort of broad appreciation for the arts and sciences that will serve her well as dean.” n