Colleen O’Connor, Ph.D., is the interim associate dean for student affairs at the Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine. She is an accomplished medical education leader with more than 30 years of experience in accreditation, curriculum development, institutional effectiveness, student affairs and academic administration.

Most recently, O’Connor served as the founding senior associate dean for academic affairs and professor at the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Arkansas, where she was the institution’s first employee and a member of the leadership team that established the medical school and secured its accreditation. Her responsibilities included oversight of state authorization, institutional and programmatic accreditation, continuous quality improvement, admissions, student affairs and the educational program. She has served as faculty accreditation lead at two medical schools and continues to consult with medical schools seeking accreditation and reaccreditation.

Prior to joining the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, O’Connor was associate dean for curricular affairs and an associate professor at Duke University School of Medicine. In that role, she led the development, implementation and continuous renewal of the school’s innovative four-year curriculum and served as faculty lead for the institution’s reaccreditation efforts. She was named one of the inaugural Distinguished Members of the Duke Academy for Health Professions Education and Development. O’Connor is also recognized for her expertise in learning space design and construction and played a key role in developing the Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans Center for Health Education, a 104,000-square-foot health education facility at Duke.

Earlier in her career, O’Connor helped establish the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, where she developed curriculum for a two-year physician fellowship and supported the creation of interprofessional educational opportunities across the health professions programs.

O’Connor has contributed extensively to medical education at the national and international levels. She served for many years on a national advisory board with the Association of American Medical Colleges and has worked internationally to advance medical education initiatives. Her efforts include helping establish Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, supporting curriculum enhancement initiatives in Tanzania through a National Institutes of Health-funded project and serving as a consultant to medical universities in Kazakhstan. She has been invited to speak at numerous national and international conferences.

O’Connor earned her doctorate in higher education from the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on innovation and change in medical education, and she has served as principal investigator on multiple grants examining curricular innovation, curricular reform, interprofessional education and models for funding educational programs.