Christine E. Kasper, PhD, RN

Christine E. Kasper, PhD, RN, is the dean of the School of Nursing. Dr. Kasper earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing at the University of Evansville in Indiana, a Master of Science in Nursing at Rush University in Chicago and a PhD in nursing from the University of Michigan, where she also focused on exercise physiology. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Rush University in physiology and biophysics, she served as assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing and associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Nursing. She was also the M. Adelaide Nutting Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Kasper’s scholarship has covered a broad range of topics but has a significant focus on muscle atrophy and, more recently, conflict-related injuries. She has more than 200 national and international peer-reviewed and invited publications, books and presentations to her credit. Additionally, she has worked across disciplines with researchers, clinicians, educators and policymakers and held leadership positions in interprofessional organizations, like the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), to enhance the application of advances in rehabilitation and genomics in health care and clinical research.

Dr. Kasper was previously dean of the University of New Mexico (UNM) College of Nursing, a position she held since 2018. Before joining UNM, she served as a senior nurse executive and senior research scientist in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Nursing Services, and was professor and chair in the Daniel K. Inouye Graduate School of Nursing at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. She was also principal investigator on numerous National Institutes of Health, NASA and Department of Veterans Affairs grants and has studied the role of “desert dust” metals on the pathobiology of Gulf War Illness.

The current editor of the Annual Review of Nursing Research, Dr. Kasper was founding editor of Biological Research for Nursing. She was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Nurses in 1994, a fellow of ACSM in 1995 and inducted into the Sigma Theta Tau International Inaugural Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame in 2015.