Kara Shultz, Ph.D.

Dr. Shultz brings over 30 years in higher education to her new position. She most recently served as the interim dean of undergraduate education (2020-22) and as the special assistant to the president for retention (2018-20) at Bloomsburg focused on building the institutional capacity to improve retention by supporting policies, curriculum, resources, and infrastructure designed to promote student academic success.

Dr. Shultz has been responsible for the implementation of the early alert system, developing a first-year experience program, and coordinating the shift from developmental courses to a model of co-requisite course support. She has also served as a long-time faculty member (1991-2022) and former chairperson of communication studies (2008-2014, 2017-2018) at Bloomsburg, teaching courses in public speaking, social influence, event planning, and community leadership.

She is a first-generation college student who attended a public university to receive her undergraduate degree. Dr. Shultz received her Ph.D. in human communication from the University of Denver (1991) and her MA (1988) and BA (1986) from the University of Northern Colorado.

As an applied communication scholar, Dr. Shultz has focused on building communicative processes that support broad engagement to help organizations and communities develop shared understandings across competing perspectives to strengthen collaborative action.

She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and has participated in the Kettering Institute Centers of Public Deliberation program. She has published essays on the rhetoric of persons with disabilities appearing in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, The Howard Journal of Communications, and in the edited volumes Conflict and Diversity, and Handbook of Communication and People with Disabilities. Her research on food and communication has been published in the Rhetoric of Food. She has co-edited an undergraduate textbook on Introduction to Communication: Translating Scholarship into Meaningful Practice (2012, revision in progress 2023).

As vice provost of undergraduate education, Dr. Shultz manages the offices of the registrar, the early alert system, and curriculum processes including general education and interdisciplinary programs. As dean of the Honors College, Dr. Shultz oversees the multi-campus Honors College ensuring its commitment to providing a transformative intellectual experience for highly academically motivated students that fosters independent and innovative inquiry, intercultural connections, and leadership and civic engagement.