Posted on June 29, 2023 by Rebecca Luther
UTSA Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Kimberly Andrews Espy today announced the appointment of Jill Fleuriet as vice provost for honors education. She begins her duties July 1.
UTSA Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Kimberly Andrews Espy today announced the appointment of Jill Fleuriet as vice provost for honors education. She begins her duties July 1.
As vice provost, Fleuriet will lead honors education programs across the institution, as well as the UTSA Honors Residential College (HRC), to advance a dynamic vision as a collaborative, innovative college that serves high-achieving UTSA students with a nationally recognized, experience-based curriculum that is tailored to each student’s personal and professional goals. Fleuriet’s hire coincides with UTSA’s commitment to expand honors opportunities to more students and to emphasize honors residential life through the HRC.
“Honors education at UTSA has a long tradition of serving our most academically driven students and promoting the highest standards of academic excellence across the university,” said Espy. “Dr. Fleuriet brings a distinguished record of experience — as well as a demonstrated passion and advocacy for honors education — to this role. She is well poised to build upon past success under Dr. Sean Kelly’s leadership in engaging our entire campus community in honors education that supports students from all backgrounds in reaching their full potential through innovative programs and activities.
“Dr. Fleuriet brings a distinguished record of experience — as well as a demonstrated passion and advocacy for honors education — to this role.”
“I would also like to recognize the search advisory committee and chair Tammy Wyatt for their work in identifying an outstanding candidate to advance honors education at UTSA.”
Fleuriet has served as honors associate dean since 2017. Additionally, she served as acting dean from 2020-2021 and 2022-present. During her tenure, she helped reimagine the college's curriculum with high impact teaching practices and experiential learning to better serve and prepare UTSA's students for the workforce.
Among other accomplishments, she built the honors curriculum, including the initial honors counseling policies and procedures; designed the college’s Experiential Learning Fair for students to share their out-of-classroom experiences in research, study abroad, internships or service learning; created a transfer student path in honors; and developed and managed a teaching honors faculty fellows program that provides group and one-on-one mentoring in experiential, active, inclusive and transformative pedagogies and course design.
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fleuriet led the development and rapid deployment of virtual mental health and community building programming for honors students, and she worked with faculty to find effective strategies to take experiential learning online, partnering with the division of Academic Innovation.
More recently, she has worked collaboratively to help develop college-based honors programming with the UTSA College of Sciences, the College for Health, Community and Policy, the Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design and the College of Liberal and Fine Arts.
“Spreading the word far and wide about our UTSA honors experience and providing more classroom-to-career research and award opportunities for UTSA students are two critical next steps to grow honors education at UTSA. We’re also committed to expanding our student life programs so that honors students can take full advantage of San Antonio’s strengths, opportunities and varied communities,” said Fleuriet.
She continued, “I am a passionate advocate for our students on and off campus. I look forward to continuing to work with the accomplished Honors Residential College team and campus partners to take honors education at UTSA to the next level. It is what our ’Runners deserve.”
A professor of anthropology, Fleuriet joined the UTSA faculty in 2003 after earning her Ph.D. in anthropology from Stanford University. She also holds M.A. degrees from Stanford and San Diego State University, and a B.A. from Harvard. A cultural and medical anthropologist from the Rio Grande Valley, her scholarship focuses on wellbeing and forms of care in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and in higher education.
At UTSA, Fleuriet has been recognized with the President’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Faculty Mentoring (2021), the Richard S. Howe Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award (2019), the President’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Excellence in University Service (2019), and the President's Distinguished Achievement Award for Community Engagement (2016), among others. She received the University of Texas System Board of Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award in 2017. In 2018, Fleuriet was selected as a fellow in the University of Texas System Academy of Distinguished Teachers, one of only three UTSA faculty members to be so recognized. She is the academy’s incoming president.
The UTSA Honors Residential College is open to students from all academic disciplines and currently enrolls 1,700 students. The HRC integrates numerous special programs including The Honors Experience Curriculum, the Citymester student engagement initiative, and the Guadalupe Hall residential community, among other projects designed to further expand knowledge, especially in the realms of professional development, leadership development and public service.
The original version of this story was originally published on UTSA Today.
— Rebecca Luther
