Paula M. Lutz

Dean
Professor of Zoology and Physiology
email: plutz@uwyo.edu

Paula Lutz arrived at the University of Wyoming (U-W) in July of 2013; she holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from Duke University with research interests in immunotoxicology.  She came to U-W from Montana State University where she was Dean of the College of Letters and Science and Professor of Cell Biology and Neuroscience.  She began her academic career at the University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR; now Missouri University of Science and Technology).  She spent twenty years on the faculty there in Biological Sciences, winning more than a dozen outstanding teaching and faculty excellence awards.  She was the P.I. on a series of NIH RO1 grants over a fifteen year period; these collaborative, interdisciplinary projects focused on investigating the effects of lead on children’s immune systems.

Paula’s administrative career at UMR included Associate Dean for Graduate Affairs and Research, Chair of Biological Sciences, and then Dean of the CAS (UMR’s first woman dean).   Acting upon her long-standing interest in encouraging diversity in STEM disciplines, she helped to create a Women’s Leadership Institute, taught “Women as Global Leaders” in the residential college there, and helped to found UMR’s Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) program.  As dean at Montana State, she maintained her interest in mentoring by serving on the MSU ADVANCE grant advisory committee, established the New Faculty Forum for first and second year faculty members, and helped to create DEAL (Developing Excellence in Academic Leaders), a new leadership development program. 

While at MSU, she actively supported the recruitment and retention of Native American students, chairing the Native American Education Advisory Board (NAEAB) which created “Native Pathways,” a new orientation session focused on Native American students and their families.  She served as the P.I. on the $14.9M NIH C06 construction grant to renovate MSU’s Cooley Labs for biomedical research, and as P.I.  MSU’s NIH ‘Bridges to the Baccalaureate’ grant which encourages students at Tribal Colleges to pursue four-year degrees in biomedical fields.  She has been a member of the Board of the national Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences and in summer 2012 led a New Deans Seminar where she facilitated conversations on implicit bias.

Paula is married to Len Lutz (Engineering and Applied Science’s Center for Student Services).  They are the parents of two daughters—Lauren (Chicago, IL) and Alyson (Bozeman, MT)—and four ‘furry children’ (three cats and a Labrador).  She enjoys reading, hiking, music, photography, and vacationing on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.