Kristin Geraty

Kristin Geraty is provost and vice president for academic affairs at North Central College where she previously served as director of college honors programs, inaugural dean of engaged learning, and associate provost. Her interest in building, sustaining, and leading strong institutions started as an intellectual question: How can we better understand the cultural processes that drive organizational change? As a sociologist of religion and culture, she engaged in collaborative research to explore institutional change at the Second Vatican Council from the perspective of leaders within the Roman Catholic Church. She also spent several years on the ground doing fieldwork with community organizers, curious about why and how churches, synagogues, and mosques get involved in politics and what it means for those congregations. Now as an academic administrator, Kristin is both practically and intellectually curious about what makes cultural, curricular, and institutional change possible in higher education.  

Selected Scholarship

Fleming, CJ Eubanks, Henville, Letitia, Denyse Lafrance-Horning, Kristin Geraty, and Cat Wilson. Forthcoming. “Faculty Willingness and Ability to Engage with Work-Integrated Learning (WIL): Piloting the Faculty Engagement Model in the WIL Sphere.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry.

Ilahi, Shereen, Maria Bergstrom, Kristin Geraty, Niti Pandey, Mary Raber, Marika Seigel, Kelly Steelman, Patricia Szczys. Forthcoming. “A Consultative Framework for General Education Reform: Change Management and the Power of Storytelling.” Journal of General Education.

Henville, Letitia, Denyse Lafrance-Horning, Kristin Geraty, Cat Wilson. 2025 “Towards an Understanding of Faculty Members’ Support for Engagement in Work-Integrated Learning.” International Journal of Work-Integrated Learning 26(2): 291-306.

Geraty, Kristin. 2023. “Midlevel Administrators’ Work with Department Chairs, Part 3: Engaging in Cross-Institutional Initiatives.” The Department Chair 34(2): 21-23.

Geraty, Kristin.  2017.  “Navigating Entrenched Understandings of Community Organizing in Suburban Congregations” in Religion and Progressive Activism: New Stories about Faith and Politics editors Ruth Braunstein, Todd Fuist, and Rhys Williams.  New York: New York University Press. 

Wilde, Melissa J., Kristin Geraty, Shelley Nelson, and Emily Bowman.  2010.  “Religious Economy or Organizational Field?  Predicting Bishops’ Votes at the Second Vatican Council.”  American Sociological Review 75(4): 586-606.  

Recent Presentations

“Institutional Factors that Impact Faculty Engagement with Internships and Work-Integrated Learning.” Presented at the 2026 annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities in Washington, DC (with CJ Eubanks Fleming and Denyse Lafrance-Horning).

“General Education Reform that Advances Public Purposes: Stakeholder Relationship Strategies from Three Campuses.” Presented at the 2025 annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities in Washington, DC (with Pandey, Niti, Shereen Ilahi, Marika Seigel, Kelly Steelman, and Patricia Szczys). 

“Students, Staff, and Supervisors in Work-Integrated Learning: Collaborating to Foster Meaningful Student Learning.” Presented at the 2024 annual meeting of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) in French Lick, IN (with Jessie Moore, CJ Eubanks Fleming, Christine Kampen Robinson, Anne-Marie Fannon, and Gianna Smurro).

“Factors that influence faculty involvement in and support of WIL: Early Findings.” Presented at the 2023 annual meeting of the World Association for Cooperative Education (WACE) in Waterloo, Ontario (with Denyse Lafrance-Horning, Letitia Henville, and Cat Wilson).

“From Surviving to Thriving: A Holistic Approach to Mentoring Department Chairs.” Presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Conference of Academic Deans (ACAD) in St. Petersburg, FL (with Jennifer Keys, Jamie Mullaney, and Elaine Meyer-Lee).