Dr. Heidi Kraus of the art and art history faculty at Hope College has been appointed associate provost for academic affairs.
Kraus, who joined the Hope faculty in 2012, is an associate professor of art and art history, and is an active scholar in addition to teaching. She has served in multiple leadership positions at the college, including as chair of the Department of Art and Art History, director of the De Pree Gallery and director of global learning.
“With training in studio art and modern and contemporary art history, Heidi has years of experience in embodying knowledge and connecting this embodiment to understanding human connections in the classroom, in her research and publications, and through servant leadership,” said Dr. Gerald Griffin, provost at Hope. “Through her talents, commitment, perspectives and expertise, she will strengthen learning communities across campus to help Hope College continuously sojourn on the path God has set before us to holistically engage and develop our students and fellow colleagues.”
As a deputy to the provost, who is the college’s chief academic officer, the associate provost for academic affairs provides strategic leadership and some operational management. The associate provost partners with the college’s deans and faculty governance to identify opportunities to support faculty in their teaching and scholarship as well as faculty development, and to enhance the academic program. The associate provost also supervises the directors of a variety of programs, including ongoing faculty-development initiatives, summer research, general education, and the Klooster Center for Writing and Research.
Kraus has emphasized interdisciplinary collaboration throughout her time at Hope. She co-developed the college’s “Nations, Citizens, and Outsiders: Paris Stories” project, which brings together faculty from across multiple disciplines and divisions in the collaborative teaching of six new and revised courses. In conjunction with “Paris Stories,” she co-created and co-leads the college’s Paris May Term with Dr. Lauren Janes of the history faculty. From 2016 to 2018, she co-coordinated Hope’s “Challenging Borders” program, a two-year initiative which engaged faculty-student projects from all of the college’s academic divisions in exploring the themes of migration, displaced persons and refugees.
Her scholarly background is in neoclassicism, with a focus on 18th- and 19th-century French art and architecture. She has supported student research as a long-time adviser to the Mellon Scholars Program. She engages Hope students in her research, which in 2017 included a project in Paris, France, to locate, photograph, analyze and digitally map contemporary street art and sites of memory following the 2015 terrorist attacks.
Kraus is co-author, with Nicholas K. Rauh, of the book “A Short History of the Ancient World” (University of Toronto Press, 2017), and has written several articles published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and book reviews. Her current book project is “Lessons to My Students: On Art History and Why It Matters,” contracted for publication with the University of Toronto Press.
She has presented her research nationally and internationally. She has also curated numerous exhibitions, including a traveling exhibition titled “Napoleon and the Art of Propaganda,” based on a renowned private Parisian collection; and, at Hope, “Hateful Things / Resilience,” an exploration of issues related to race and discrimination.
Prior to coming to Hope, she taught at the University of Iowa and Drake University. She was also a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. She graduated from Drake University in 2002 with a BFA in graphic design, and completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in art history at the University of Iowa in 2004 and 2010, respectively.
Kraus succeeds Dr. Daryl Van Tongeren of Hope’s psychology faculty, who had been serving as interim associate provost since 2021. Van Tongeren held the interim role during the 2021-22 academic year to fill the vacancy that resulted when Griffin, who had been associate provost, was named interim provost in January 2021; Griffin subsequently became provost this past March.