Following a comprehensive nationwide search, Provost and Executive Vice President Mike Ibba announced Christopher Kim, Ph.D., as the next dean of Schmid College of Science and Technology.
“Chris’s deep dedication to students and expertise in curricular innovation, particularly with interdisciplinary learning and undergraduate research, has prepared him to lead Schmid College into the future,” said Ibba. “He is the perfect individual to advance Schmid’s mission of developing leaders with problem-solving skills that transcend any one discipline and who are ready to tackle real-world scientific problems.”
With more than two decades of service to Chapman University, Kim has demonstrated his strong and meaningful commitment to personalized education, undergraduate research, and curriculum development. Prior to serving as interim dean, he was the senior associate dean of academic programs and faculty development for Schmid College. He also served as director of the university’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (now the Center for Undergraduate Excellence) from 2011–2015 and co-created and led Schmid’s Environmental Science & Policy B.S. degree program for several years.
With a deep belief in the power of mentorship in scientific fields, Kim created the first formalized science faculty mentoring program in Schmid College, which currently pairs more than 30 junior faculty with senior faculty members, personally mentoring six junior faculty members. In the Kim Environmental Geochemistry Lab, he has mentored more than 100 Chapman undergraduate students and dozens of high school and community college students. He also directs the National Science Foundation-funded Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program at Chapman, which has, since 2014, provided valuable summer research experiences for more than 120 students from six partnering local community colleges.
An environmental geochemist by training, Kim focuses his current research on arsenic contamination in mine wastes from abandoned gold mines in California and lead distribution in ash-impacted soils from the 2025 Los Angeles fires. He also studies the removal of dissolved metals from surface water supplies through adsorption to mineral surfaces, and with his students, uses high-powered X-rays generated at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center to examine the atomic structure of their collected samples.
Kim is a frequently invited speaker and published author in the fields of environmental geochemistry and undergraduate research. He has been continually funded throughout his career at Chapman by more than $3.7 million in grants from the National Science Foundation, Bureau of Land Management, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, the American Chemical Society, and private foundations. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award based on accomplishment in scholarly research with undergraduates, the Cottrell Scholar Award for exceptional teacher-scholars, and the 2023 Geosciences Faculty Mentor Award from the Council on Undergraduate Research.
Kim earned a B.A. in geology from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford University. He completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley before beginning his first academic position as an assistant professor at Chapman University in 2004. Kim also spent one year as a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s School of Public Health and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He has received an executive certificate in higher education leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
“As a science educator, I am thrilled to see Dean Kim taking on this new role at Chapman,” said Roxanne Greitz Miller, search committee chair and dean, Donna Ford Attallah College of Educational Studies. “His scholarly and administrative leadership, anchored in an unwavering commitment to students, will support a vibrant future for our Schmid College students, faculty, and the broader community.”
Photo by Andrew Castro
