Christine Boake’s duties include allocating financial support from the college for faculty research, including travel, equipment, start-up funds, and assistance with publication. She is eager to discuss opportunities for external funding with faculty members, and her assistant, Cathy Parks, can provide assistance to those who are new to PAMS. Boake works closely with the Office of Research and serves on the Research Council. She is a member of the Top 25 research team, chaired by the vice chancellor for research and engagement.
Boake views facilities as being tightly linked to the abilities of faculty to excel in research, creative activity, and instruction. She oversees the allocation of existing space within the college, and serves as the college liaison to the campus-wide Space Committee. She is deeply involved in the academic aspects of planning and design for new construction; as of fall 2013, two new science buildings to be used by college departments are in the design stage. Boake also chairs a campus-wide committee that provides instructional technology to classrooms and helps facilitate instructional practices that are grounded in rigorous research.
Boake received a PhD from Cornell University and did postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago. After spending two years conducting research at the University of Hawaii, she joined the Department of Zoology at UT. After its transition to the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, she served as associate head (1998–2002) and head (2002–2008) of the department. In 2008 she moved to the DC area to serve the National Science Foundation as a program officer in the Division of Environmental Biology, a position that gave her experience in the processes of funding regular research grants, IGERT grants, other grants for education, and grants for the improvement of facilities. She returned to UT and began serving as an associate dean in 2010.
