Karen Gaines, Ph.D. has served as the Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Norwich University since 2022. Dr. Gaines reports to the President and is the second-ranking university official. As such, she serves as the Chief Operating (Administrative) Officer for the University in the absence of the President. Dr. Gaines is also the Chief Academic Officer and provides leadership to all academic areas to reflect the mission of the institution including long-range planning, budgeting, online and campus-based curriculum, and program development. She ensures compliance with various accreditation agencies as well as state accreditation and regulation. Dr. Gaines oversees all research centers and institutes as well as the Office of Sponsored Programs, thus maintaining all active extramural funding from federal, state, and local agencies as well as private foundations.
Prior to her appointment, Dr. Gaines served as the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (COAS) at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) Daytona Beach campus where she started the Aerospace Physiology Program within the Department of Human Factors and Behavioral Neurobiology. While overseeing academic programs for the College, Dr. Gaines was also the academic liaison for the Air Force, Space Force, Naval Sciences, and Army ROTC units. Dr. Gaines worked as a research scientist at the US Department of Energy’s (USDOE) Savannah River Site, served as the Department Chair of Biological Sciences at Eastern Illinois University and was founding Director of the Geographic Information Science Center at this same institution. Dr. Gaines’ Ph.D is in Environmental Toxicology from the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health, where she worked with USDOE’s Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP) to quantify exposure pathways and develop spatially explicit risk models for vulnerable populations living near nuclear waste sites using multiple endpoints. Her work in radiation epidemiology, exposure, risk assessment and radionuclide fate and transport earned her the doctoral achievement award for her contributions. She also holds a post-graduate certificate in Global Public Health from Harvard.
Dr. Gaines is internationally recognized for her expertise on the fate and transport of toxicants in extreme environments for both environmental and human risk assessment, specifically as it pertains to health physics, radiobiology, radiochemistry, metals, and organics. Dr. Gaines is an appointed member of both the Health Physics Society and the International Union of Radioecology. She has active roles within the Aerospace Medical Society and the American Public Health Association. She is an active member of the Air & Space Force Association (AFA) and the Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA).
