Ann Schmiesing biography
Ann Schmiesing is the senior vice chancellor for strategic initiatives.Ìý
The SVCSI is a campuswide resource, combining strategic oversight with high-level support to the chancellor, serving as a key advisor and liaison across Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØBoulder’s executive team. Ann works across internal and external constituencies to advance campus goals and ensure ongoing and consistent success.
She served as interim chancellor at Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØDenver in fall 2024 and previously served as vice chancellor and executive vice provost for academic resource management on the Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØBoulder campus. As VC-ARM, she was responsible for academic resource strategy and analysis in support of the university’s mission as a comprehensive public teaching and research institution. In that role, she assumed a strategic initiative and critical liaison role while overseeing the Graduate School, Continuing Education, Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØBoulder Online, and research infrastructure.
A professor of German, Schmiesing has been a Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØBoulder faculty member since 1995. Her research and teaching interests span 18th- and 19th-century German and Norwegian literature and culture. She has written the books The Brothers Grimm: A Biography (2024), Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales (2014) and Norway’s Christiania Theatre, 1827-1867: From Danish Showhouse to National Stage (2006), as well as a couple dozen articles on fairy tales and folklore, disability studies, book illustration, and drama and dramatic criticism.Ìý
Before assuming her administrative roles, Schmiesing served as chair of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures (2007–11), director of the Sewall Residential Academic Program (2015–16), and dean of the Graduate School and vice provost for graduate affairs (2016–18). She received the Excellence in Leadership and Service Award from the Boulder Faculty Assembly in 2016.Ìý
Schmiesing earned a PhD from Cambridge University (UK), an MA from the University of Washington, and a BA from Willamette University. .
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