Karin is the inaugural Director of the Office of Educational Opportunity (OEO), a partnership between the Poorvu Center and Yale College. She is responsible for directing the four constituent programs of the OEO: Academic Strategies (2016), FGLI Thrive (2019), Disability Peer Mentors (2021), and STEM Navigators (2022). As an assistant dean in Yale College, Karin also partners with colleagues in academic affairs, student engagement, and student life in support of undergraduate student success within and outside of the classroom. Karin has dedicated her professional career to increasing student access to opportunities provided by higher education, especially for first-generation/low-income students and students with disabilities and/or neurodivergence.
Karin began her career at Yale in 2006 as a full-time Lecturer for the Department of English. In 2010, she transitioned into an assistant director role at the Yale College Writing Center, where she worked with faculty and graduate students across the curriculum who taught writing intensive (WR) courses. Karin earned her Ph.D. in Literatures in English from Rutgers University-New Brunswick in 2006; her dissertation examines late 20th-century novels that depict the construction of community in the wake of civil violence. She has sustained an interest in pedagogy and writing since the mid-1990s when she coordinated the writing center at the University of Illinois-Chicago and worked with the Rutgers Writing Program. Karin enjoys spending time with her partner, Phil, and their three children, which most frequently involves adventures with roller coasters, historical places & trivia, theater and easy hikes.