Dr. Susan Carvalho, associate provost and dean of the Graduate School, announced this week her plans to retire in summer 2026 after 10 outstanding years of service.
Since joining the University in 2016, Dr. Carvalho has led the Graduate School with an agenda focused on growth and globalization of graduate education, as well as overall improvement of the graduate student experience. Under her leadership, UA has seen a remarkable 38% increase in graduate enrollments, setting a new record this fall.
Her tenure at UA has involved a strategic and data-informed approach to recruitment, including supporting both digital and in-person recruitment strategies, and partnering with academic departments to broaden their reach. With the support of Graduate School and campus-wide colleagues, she has helped to expand UA’s global footprint, with international graduate enrollments increasing by 65% since 2016.
She has overseen the implementation of an efficient Slate system for recruitment, admissions, data, and student management that has become a reference point for peer institutions across the US. Graduate student success and well-being have been fostered through effective partnerships with UA’s colleges and programs, as well as offices such as the Career Center and the Counseling Center, whose services to graduate students have been expanded in recent years.
Dr. Carvalho has high praise for the talented team of professionals with whom she has served in the Graduate School. Their dedication to graduate education at UA has led to expansion in both numbers and services. As Dr. Carvalho notes, “with this experienced and forward-thinking team, the UA Graduate School is in very good hands.”
Other significant advances during her years of service include rebranding and growth in the Accelerated Master’s Program (AMP), continuous graduate stipend increases, multiple dashboards and other reports that put actionable graduate-education data into the hands of colleges and programs, the convening of campus-wide Retreats and other conversations on graduate education, and a responsive approach to policy-making to enhance student progress and support. Her consensus-focused leadership style has helped to forge relationships of trust and confidence between the Graduate School and UA’s colleges and programs.
Before joining UA, Dr. Carvalho served at the University of Kentucky as associate provost and senior international officer, interim dean of the Graduate School, associate dean in the College of Arts & Sciences, chair of the General Education Reform Steering Committee and interim department chair in both Hispanic studies and political science. For six years during that time, she also served as Director of Middlebury College’s Spanish School, a vibrant immersion program involving 300 undergraduate and graduate students each year as well as faculty from across the US, Spain, and Latin America. She has been involved in several selective national programs, including serving as a Fulbright Fellow, an American Council on Education Fellow, and a Presidential Fellow of the Association of International Education Administrators.
Her career has been marked by numerous professional recognitions. While at UK, she was the recipient of one of the university’s highest honors, the William B. Sturgill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate Education, as well as receiving the UK Alumni Association’s Great Teacher Award. At UA, in 2024 she received the Distinguished Special Achievement award from UA’s Council on Community-Based Partnerships, whose Executive Committee she currently chairs.
Across all of her professional pursuits, Dr. Carvalho says she has been driven by “a passion for connecting talent to opportunities.” In her words, “I was so fortunate to have had fantastic mentors throughout my education, who pointed me towards doors I didn’t know existed, and supported me in unlocking them. As a professor and in my administrative roles, I have tried to connect as many students as possible to equally supportive mentors and opportunities.”
With her scholarly foundation in the field of Hispanic studies, Dr. Carvalho has authored a monograph, a collection of essays and more than 30 scholarly articles in Latin American and Latino/a cultural studies, in addition to directing 40 doctoral dissertations. She was named to Sigma Delta Pi’s Orden de los Descubridores, one of the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society’s highest honors. She was also named Honorary President of that honor society.
She has been the principal investigator on several grants focused on higher education development in post-conflict regions, including a high-impact program for promoting women’s leadership in Pakistani higher education while at UA, and a similar program on effective leadership development in Indonesian universities during her UK tenure. She has served in national leadership roles in both graduate and international higher education, including multi-year terms on the American Council on Education’s Commission on Internationalization and Global Engagement and on the Board of Directors of the Council of Graduate Schools, as well as serving as a consultant for the ACE Internationalization Laboratory and for the Council of Graduate Schools.
“It has been a privilege to lead the UA Graduate School across the past decade,” said Dr, Carvalho. “I have been so fortunate to work with world-class teams at all levels, including visionary campus leadership, the creative and dedicated Graduate School staff, the faculty who mentor, inspire, and support our graduate students, and the students themselves – our next generation of professionals and scholars. I’m honored to have helped shape a decade of growth, innovation, and excellence, and I am even more excited to see how graduate education at UA will continue to flourish in the years to come.”
Additional plans on the national search for the next leader of the Graduate School will be shared in the coming months.