Dr. Joanna Kain Gentsch

Joanna Kain Gentsch is a developmental psychologist and received both her PhD and master’s degree from UT Dallas and her undergraduate degree in psychology from Southern Methodist University. She has administrative leadership experience at both the school and university level as Assistant Dean in Behavioral and Brain Sciences and as Associate Dean in the Office of Graduate Education and most recently as the Director of Community Engaged Learning in the Office of Undergraduate Education. In 2017, she received a UT System Quantum Leap grant to expand experiential learning opportunities through Community engaged learning and has created innovative student programming focused on social and academic belonging. She has been honored for her teaching with the President’s Excellence in Teaching award and in 2020 was awarded the UT System Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award. For more than two decades, as part of the instructional faculty in the school of Behavioral and Brain Sciences and through the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College, she has taught thousands of undergraduates in a wide variety of psychology classes. After several decades, Professor Gentsch retired from UT Dallas in 2021 and is currently an adjunct professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut.