Karri A. Holley

Karri A. Holley is Professor of Higher Education at The University of Alabama. She earned a Ph.D. and M.Ed. from the University of Southern California, and a B.A. from The University of Alabama. Her research interests include organizational change in higher education, graduate and doctoral education, interdisciplinarity, and qualitative inquiry. She currently serves as editor of Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education. Her articles have been included in Educational Researcher, Higher Education, Innovative Higher Education, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education, and Journal of Higher Education.

Prior to her faculty career, she worked in graduate admissions at Pepperdine University; was a research assistant at the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis (now the Pullias Center) at the University of Southern California; and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine. Holley is involved in several NSF-funded programs that focus on increasing transfer student access to the bachelor’s degree; interdisciplinary graduate STEM curricula; and the development of transferable skills for doctoral students.

Holley previously served as chair of the Special Interest Group for Graduate and Postdoctoral Education for the American Educational Research Association. She teaches courses for masters and doctoral level students on organization and governance, curriculum development, and qualitative inquiry; several doctoral dissertations for which she served as chair have gone on to win institutional awards as well as recognition from professional associations.