Joan F. Lorden, Ph.D.

Dr. Lorden joined the University of North Carolina at Charlotte as Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs in 2003.  She received a BA from the City College of New York and a PhD in psychology from Yale University.  For over eight years, Dr. Lorden served as Associate Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) where she was a Professor of Psychology.  She has published extensively in the area of brain-behavior relationships and specialized in the study of animal models of human neurological disease.  In 1991, she was awarded the Ireland Prize for Scholarly Distinction. She has served on peer review panels and scientific advisory boards at NIH, NSF, DoD, and private agencies.  At UAB she organized the doctoral program in behavioral neuroscience and directed the university-wide interdisciplinary Graduate Training Program in Neuroscience. In addition to her work in research and graduate education at UAB, Dr. Lorden founded an Office of Postdoctoral Education, programs for professional development of graduate students, an undergraduate honors program, and several programs designed to improve the recruitment of women and minorities into doctoral programs in science and engineering. At UNC Charlotte, she provides leadership for the seven colleges and university-wide graduate school that house 80 bachelor’s, 58 master’s, and 14 doctoral programs.  She serves on the Board of Directors for the Charlotte Research Institute, the Institute for Social Capital, and the Echo Foundation.  

Dr. Lorden was elected Chair of the Board of Directors of the Council of Graduate Schools (2003) and during 2002-03, she was the Dean in Residence in the Division of Graduate Education at National Science Foundation.  She has chaired the Board of Directors of Oak Ridge Associated Universities, was a Trustee of the Southeastern Universities Research Association, and chaired the executive committee of the Council on Research Policy and Graduate Education of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC). She is currently a member of the executive committee of the NASULGC Council on Academic Affairs and the Transitions to Higher Education Working Group. She served as a member of the National Research Council’s (NRC) Committee on the Methodology for the Study of the Research Doctorate and the Steering Committee for the NRC’s Workshop on the Quality of Graduate Education. She is a member of the Society for Neuroscience, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychological Society.