Athens State University announced that Alyson Gill will join the University as the institution’s provost and vice president for Academic Affairs and Student Services.

Gill was selected after a nationwide search which included virtual interviews and on-campus forums with faculty, staff and students.

Gill has served in higher education leadership since 2015, first as associate provost for Instructional Innovation at a large, public, land-grant institution, then as provost at two private colleges.

Prior to moving into an administrative role, she was a tenured faculty member in art history and the founding director for the Center for Digital Initiatives at Arkansas State University. From 2015 through 2018, she served as associate provost for Instructional Innovation and associate professor of art history at University of Massachusetts-Amherst where she served as a catalyst for instructional innovation and technology initiatives by building and sustaining relationships with faculty, chairs and deans around strategies and programming.

While at UMass, she also played an advocacy role on behalf of faculty and students in campus matters related to instructional innovations, pedagogical advancements. and teaching and learning with technology. She worked closely with academic units to ensure that their needs were incorporated into undergraduate and graduate seated and online course delivery and instructional technology plans.

Gill earned her doctoral degree in history from the University of Memphis, and a master’s degree in art history specializing in Greek architecture from University of California, Irvine. Her dissertation topic focused on Greek baths and the gendered use of space in classical antiquity, and this work brought her to Greece where she worked at the Ohio State University excavations at Isthmia. She later returned on a Fulbright grant to live in Athens.

She has been awarded several grants through the National Endowment for the Humanities including two Digital Humanities Start-Up grants: Ashes2Art (2007) and Dangerous Embodiments (2014-17). She co-directed two NEH Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities Summer Institutes, “Humanities Heritage 3D Visualizations” (2012) and “Advanced Challenges in Theory and Practice in 3D Modeling of Cultural Heritage Sites” (2015-16).

“Dr. Gill brings an impressive career in higher education and a forward-thinking approach to Athens State University,” Dr. Catherine Wehlburg, president of Athens State University, said. “Her focus on student success, teaching and learning quality and academic innovation make her the right choice for this role. I look forward to working with her to build on our successes and opportunities.”

Gill is scheduled to begin her duties July 1.

“I am thrilled to be joining the Athens State University community at this pivotal point in the University’s history and to serve on the leadership team,” Gil said. “Athens State is delivering on its promise to empower and support students and is positioned to grow and flourish over the coming years. The deep love that the community has for the University is evident everywhere you go, and I knew from the first moment that I stepped foot on campus that I wanted to be part of that story.”