Maggie Braun and Ken Hovis.

Braun, Hovis Promoted for Their Support of Student Success

By Heidi Opdyke Email Heidi Opdyke

Heidi Opdyke

Maggie Braun, Carnegie Mellon University's Mellon College of Science associate dean for undergraduate affairs has been promoted to senior associate dean for student success and strategic initiatives; and Ken Hovis, assistant dean for educational initiatives, has been promoted to associate dean for educational initiatives.

"The leadership and dedication Maggie and Ken provide to MCS and to our students has profoundly shaped the student experience within our college," said Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, Glen de Vries Dean of the Mellon College of Science. "Please join me in congratulating them on these well-deserved promotions!"

For more than a decade, Braun and Hovis have fostered the growth of undergraduates to become the next generation of scientific leaders and researchers. Through the MCS core education, which they helped create and lead, students gain a broad education in science, mathematics and the liberal arts while using state-of-the-art computational approaches in their courses, laboratories and research activities.

Maggie Braun

Braun joined the Carnegie Mellon faculty in 2008 as assistant department head for undergraduate affairs in the Department of Biological Sciences, where she was responsible for advising all majors, curriculum development and program administration. In 2016, she was appointed associate dean for undergraduate affairs in MCS, where she has coordinated curriculum development at the college level and advises first-year students, student-defined majors and general studies majors. She also leads the Committee for Undergraduate Affairs, which advisors from MCS departments, the Health Professions Program, the Career and Professional Development Center and Student Affairs.

As the senior associate dean for student success and strategic initiatives, Braun's responsibilities are expanded to include implementing the new dean's strategic initiative priorities. These include a focus on education, research, and community. She will continue to advise first-year students and lead college-wide initiatives related to student success and persistence as well.

A teaching professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, Braun has played a key role in developing undergraduate education for the college. She has been a member of numerous committees including the groups that developed the MCS core education, designed the program outcomes for biological sciences undergraduates, established the biological sciences degree program at CMU-Qatar, and created the neuroscience major and minor programs. She won Carnegie Mellon's Award for Outstanding Contributions to Academic Advising and Mentoring in 2022. She also serves as one of the instructors for the MCS first-year seminar "EUREKA! Discovery and its Impact," for which she won a Team Teaching Innovation Award in 2017.

Braun earned her doctoral degree in molecular, cellular and developmental biology from the University of Pittsburgh and her bachelor's degree in biological sciences from Youngstown State University. Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, she served as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute.

Ken Hovis

Hovis joined the faculty as a member of the Carnegie Mellon in Qatar campus in 2011, where he served as the director and academic advisor of the biological sciences program and taught biology, neuroscience and physiology courses. He helped found the Biotechnology Explorer Outreach Program and was a co-founder of the Life Sciences Educators Network, a collaboration between CMU-Q, the Weill-Cornell Medical College in Qatar and the Supreme Education Council in Qatar.

Hovis returned to Pittsburgh in 2016 when he was appointed assistant dean for educational initiatives for MCS. He continues to implement new curricular developments. Hovis also leads summer symposium teaching workshops for MCS faculty.

In his new role as associate dean for educational initiatives, Hovis will help to oversee program assessment across the college as well as help to coordinate and support departmental program assessment in each of the four departments. In addition, he will consult with departments in the college as they work to develop new curricula or other educational initiatives.

A teaching professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, Hovis continues to travel to CMU-Q regularly to teach courses and serve as a liaison between the Pittsburgh and Doha, Qatar, campuses. He won the 2024 Julius Ashkin Award, which is presented to MCS faculty members who have shown unusual devotion and effectiveness in teaching undergraduate students.

Hovis completed his Ph.D. in Carnegie Mellon's Department of Biological Sciences in 2011 and his bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio. In 2007, as a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon, he received a National Research Service Award Fellowship from the National Institutes of Health to support his research.