Kat Weaver
Kat Weaver, Ph.D., serves as interim provost and leads the university's Academic Affairs and Student Affairs divisions, including overseeing the university's educational, scholarly, creative activities, student development, and enrollment management areas. She is also a tenured professor of biology. Weaver reports directly to incoming president Thomas Poon.
Interim Provost Weaver joined LMU June 1, 2018, and has been responsible for orienting new faculty; assisting students, faculty, and staff with research and professional development opportunities; providing leadership and support for external grants and contract funding opportunities and processes; overseeing the rank and tenure process; overseeing faculty awards and internal grants; and leveraging opportunities for online delivery of an LMU education. Kat’s grant and fundraising accomplishments since joining LMU include over $20M million funding both her own research and institutional support for faculty innovation and curriculum reform.
As Vice Provost, Kat and her team in the Office for Research and Sponsored Projects have elevated LMU’s success in garnering external funding by establishing an infrastructure for statistical analysis, grant writing, and proposal submission. Through the Office of Research and Creative Arts, Kat has overseen increased access for student research including the creation of a new Research Learning Community in 2019, which provides students with crucial training for independent and faculty-mentored research in their disciplines, as well as expanded programming for the summer and academic year. Under her leadership LMU received a $1.3 million McNair Scholars grant in 2022 to facilitate faculty-student research, ushering in our next five years of helping underrepresented students gain acceptances to top-tier Ph.D. programs.
Kat’s leadership was instrumental in the expansion of programming in the Center for Faculty Development (formerly the Center for Teaching Excellence) to include workshops, faculty learning communities, and LMU faculty fellows focused on antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion; universal design for learning; global-local opportunities; the Salon Series; and active learning pedagogy. Since 2018, Kat has also facilitated the promotions of more than 100 tenure-line faculty through her care and support in the annual year-long process.
Kat’s focus on inclusion is another strength she brings to role of Interim Provost. In Spring 2024, Kat co-chaired, alongside Margarita Ochoa, Associate Professor of History, a taskforce charged with developing recommendations on how LMU can best embrace its new status as a Hispanic Serving Institution. The taskforce generated a compelling history of Latina/o/x/e students, staff, and faculty at LMU; a deep understanding of how our HSI status embodies LMU’s Jesuit, Marymount, and Catholic traditions; and 10 recommendations for meaningful institutional improvement to benefit all students, many of which Kat has already shepherded forward towards implementation.
Weaver earned her Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research on land snails and freshwater fish has been published in a variety of journal articles and technical reports. She also publishes and presents frequently about STEM education and student learning, with a focus on gender equity. Dr. Weaver came to LMU in 2018 from the University of La Verne, where she served on the faculty for 12 years, most recently as professor of biology and as associate dean of learning, innovation, and teaching. Weaver’s textbook, “An Introduction to Statistical Analysis in Research,” utilizes an electronic format that supports hybrid learning.