UT Dallas Provost and Executive Vice President Hobson Wildenthal has appointed Dr. Abby Kratz to lead the University’s newly formed Office of Institutional Scholarship Administration. In response to the significant increase of donations for endowed scholarships at UT Dallas, the University has created a new office to provide oversight and accountability of scholarship awards, to ensure compliance with donor intentions, and to make current and potential students aware of scholarship opportunities.
The office will provide similar oversight over all University scholarship operations. It will provide a comprehensive link between all of the University offices that award scholarships and all of the University offices that ensure campuswide compliance with UT Dallas and UT System policies and state and federal orders and statutes. These areas include Internal Audit, Institutional Compliance, endowment compliance and Institutional Equity, particularly Title IX issues.
The office also will be responsible for a website that will provide information regarding all scholarship opportunities, including criteria, application instructions and deadlines.
Kratz, an associate provost, most recently served as director of the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies. She has served in a variety of key roles during her 25 years at UT Dallas, including interim director of the McDermott Library and Academic Affairs leadership on the University’s Handbook of Operating Procedures Committee. She also oversaw the creation and implementation of the Quality Enhancement Project of the University’s last Southern Association of Colleges and Schools accreditation reaffirmation process.
“As associate provost, Dr. Kratz has always been selflessly responsive to newly emerged needs for leadership of key initiatives,” Wildenthal said. “Only two years ago, I requested her to assume leadership of the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies. Now, by virtue of her broad and deep knowledge of University operations, she is perfectly credentialed to assume this new position.
“Under her leadership, the Holocaust Studies Program has reached a level of stability and maturity such that the tenured faculty members of program can themselves assume its administrative responsibilities, and thus I can with confidence request Abby to take on this new challenge.”
Dr. Nils Roemer, Stan and Barbara Rabin Professor in Holocaust Studies and professor of history in the School of Arts and Humanities, will succeed Kratz as director of the Ackerman Center.