Christine Kasper named dean of Pitt nursing school

After a highly competitive national search, Christine E. Kasper has been named dean of Pitt’s School of Nursing. She served the past four years as dean of the University of New Mexico’s College of Nursing.

Christine KasperOn Jan. 1, 2023, Kasper will replace Jacqueline Dunbar-Jacob, dean and distinguished service professor of nursing, whose leadership and dedication throughout the past 21 years have “positioned Pitt Nursing as one of the top nursing schools nationwide,” a statement the University said. Dunbar-Jacob is on sabbatical now and will retire effective June 30, 2023.

“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. “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 New Mexico, Kasper leads a nursing college with more than 1,100 students. In the previous three years, enrollment in New Mexico’s College of Nursing increased by 35 percent. 

Before joining the University of New Mexico, 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, Md.

“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 in a news release. “The University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing has long served as one of the pre-eminent 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 editor of the Annual Review of Nursing Research and was founding editor of Biological Research for Nursing. She was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nurses in 1994, as a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine in 1995 and 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 a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Evansville in Indiana, a master’s degree in nursing from Rush University in Illinois and a doctorate at 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 professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UCLA. She also held the M. Adelaide Nutting Research Chair at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.