DR. SUSAN R. KINSEY: BIOGRAPHY

Susan Kinsey most recently served as associate vice provost for continuing education at the University of Pittsburgh. She was dean of Pitt’s College of General Studies for nontraditional students from 1999–2006. Prior to her arrival at Pitt, she held the position of dean of continuing education and special programs at American University in Washington, DC. Dr. Kinsey holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in French from Columbia University and was both a Columbia President’s Fellow and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow during her years at Columbia. She has worked in the field of adult and nontraditional education for over 20 years, both in the U.S. and in Europe, where she spent eight years developing continuing education programs for a European audience and serving on the national standards and practices committee for workforce training in France. 

Dr. Kinsey began her academic career on the faculty of Baruch College, City University of New York in the Romance Languages Department. She later served as assistant dean of the New School in New York, with responsibility for the adult degree program and professional development certificates. While living in England in 1980, she obtained a TESOL certification from the Royal Society of Arts.

Dr. Kinsey has been an active member of the University Continuing Education Association (UCEA) since 1988, serving on two national conference planning committees and the UCEA International Relations Committee. She is currently a member of the Board of UCEA, serves as vice chair of the Commission on Leadership, and is chair of the association’s Professional Development Committee.  Dr. Kinsey has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Continuing Education and the Continuing Higher Education Review. Over the years, she has published and presented papers on comparative European-American workforce development issues and was an active member of the executive committee of the Allegheny County Regional Learning Network in Pennsylvania. Dr. Kinsey’s community work in Pittsburgh included service on the boards of the Hill House Association and People’s Oakland, both comprehensive community care and social service agencies. She is also a member of the southwest Pennsylvania branch of the International Women’s Forum.