Kathryn Zimmerman

Associate Vice President for Strategic and Emergent Academic Initiatives

Phone: 848-932-5220

Email: kathy.zimmerman@rutgers.edu

Location:
Winants Hall
7 College Avenue
Suite 410
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Roles and Responsibilities

• Early-stage universitywide academic initiatives including the online education initiative
• Reporting functions: Office of Veteran and Military Programs and Services, University Registrar, Educational Opportunity Fund Central Administration, Communications

Biography

Kathryn Zimmerman, Ph.D., is associate vice president for strategic and emergent academic initiatives in the Office of the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs within University Academic Affairs. Dr. Zimmerman leads high-priority, early-stage university academic change initiatives and directs multiple academic affairs functions, including communications, veteran and military programs and services, and the university registrar. She serves as the university academic affairs liaison for central administration for the state-funded Educational Opportunity Fund program and administers the university’s Council on Online Education. She also co-administers the university’s Council on Online Education, Academic Technology Advisory Council and the Academic Working Group for the university's AI initiative.

Zimmerman held numerous administrative positions at Lehigh University before coming to Rutgers, including development and oversight of an internal consultancy function in the provost’s office that provided university leaders, faculty and staff with business intelligence, process organization, and project leadership. In an earlier role, she directed Lehigh’s external nonprofit engagement function, including its work with independent private foundations to raise new funding for research and education. In 2017, she received Lehigh’s Hillman Exempt Staff Award for exemplary initiative and service.

Zimmerman earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Grinnell College in Iowa, a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Columbia University, and was a post-doctoral fellow in biology at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) where she was a NIH and subsequent HHMI post-doctoral fellow. She spent more than a decade as a research professor and NIH principal investigator at The Rockefeller University in New York, studying the molecular determinants of early neural development with a team of post-doctoral fellows and staff.

A Fellow of the Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership, Zimmerman is an active community volunteer, a board member of Meals on Wheels in Greater New Brunswick, and a past president of the Jewish Community Center of the Lehigh Valley.