Associate Dean for the University Curriculum
As Associate Dean for the University Curriculum in the Office of Undergraduate Education, Leslie Schiff oversees activities of the Campus Curriculum Committee, the Council on Liberal Education, and the Campus Writing Board, and serves as a liaison to collegiate-level curriculum committees. In addition, she is a member of the OUE Executive Committee for Assessment and serves as an advisor on educational policy issues related to the curriculum.
Schiff earned her Sc.B in Biology from Brown University in 1979 and her Ph.D. in Immunology from Tufts University in 1986. She joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota in 1990 after a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School. A Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Leslie has served for many years as Director of Undergraduate Studies in Microbiology and as faculty liaison for the College of Biological Sciences Writing-Enriched Curriculum. She developed and teaches an undergraduate course on the biology of viruses as well as a two-semester support course for thesis writers in biology. Schiff has received University and national awards for her teaching, including the Carski Award from the American Society for Microbiology, and the Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award. Her disciplinary research focused on the cell entry of mammalian reoviruses, which are being developed as therapeutic agents to treat human cancers and she currently holds a multi-institution NSF grant to understand how writing-to-learn pedagogies can be implemented and assessed in large STEM lecture classes.