Nichole Fazio, DPhil

Nichole Fazio, DPhil, is Senior Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education. She provides leadership for the Office for Undergraduate Education (OUE) in Emory College, a unit comprised of teams of educators dedicated to academic flourishing and advancing excellence in liberal arts education. The OUE provides comprehensive support for Emory College students across the arc of their academic experience, including through its orientation and new student programs, academic advising, education abroad, honors and scholars’ programs, academic success, summer school and pre-College programs. OUE also provides critical support to faculty, partnering across departments and divisions to advance the academic mission of the Emory College of Arts and Sciences.

Dean Fazio brings to this role over two decades of experience in undergraduate education, creating and leading high-impact academic programs that center the student experience. Prior to her appointment at Emory, she served as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Research and Scholars’ Program and founding executive director of the College Center for Research and Fellowships at the University of Chicago. Under her leadership, the center became a national model, supporting thousands of students in their pursuit of research and national fellowship opportunities. In this role, she also worked closely with faculty and scholars developing research-focused undergraduate majors and other innovative experiential learning initiatives across disciplines and through international collaborations.

Dean Fazio has held previous appointments in undergraduate education at the University of Washington, the University of Tennessee (Knoxville), and with affiliated programs at the University of Oxford. She is an award- winning educator and advisor, who has taught in a variety of contexts including honors seminars, research design in the humanities, and within her own discipline. She is also the co-founder of ReCenterED, a multi-university collective focused on the flourishing of both students and educators.

She earned her B.A. in Art History from Seattle Pacific University, an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Marylhurst University, an MSt in Visual and Material Culture and DPhil in the History of Art from the University of Oxford, where she was a postgraduate member of Trinity College. Dean Fazio’s current research focuses on representations of the poetic sublime in 19th-century British photography, particularly in the art of Julia Margaret Cameron. Her recent book on the subject is a collaboration with Oxford’s Bodleian Library and celebrates its remarkable collection of Cameron photographs, including her illustrations of Alfred Tennyson’s epic Arthurian poem, Idylls of the King.

Nichole looks forward to collaborating with College leadership, faculty, and staff in advancing excellence in the liberal arts and centering the student experience in that collective endeavor.

• DPhil, History of Art, University of Oxford, UK
• MSt, Visual and Material Culture, with distinction, University of Oxford, UK
• MA, Interdisciplinary Studies: Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Religion, Marylhurst University, Portland, Oregon
• BA, History of Art, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA