Ann Schmiesing

Ann Schmiesing was appointed to serve as interim chancellor of CU Denver beginning August 2024. In her permanent role at CU Boulder, Schmiesing is the vice chancellor and executive vice provost for academic resource management (VC-ARM) and a professor of German. As VC-ARM, she is responsible for academic resource strategy and analysis in support of the university’s mission as a comprehensive public teaching and research institution. She assumes a strategic initiative and critical liaison role with the various directorates in the division of Strategic Resources and Support, and she oversees the Graduate School, Continuing Education, CU Boulder Online, and research infrastructure.

Schmiesing has been a CU Boulder 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 Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales (2014), Norway’s Christiania Theatre, 1827-1867: From Danish Showhouse to National Stage (2006), and The Brothers Grimm: A Biography (forthcoming in 2024), as well as a couple dozen articles on fairy tales and folklore, disability studies, book illustration, and drama and dramatic criticism.

Before assuming her current administrative role, 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.

Schmiesing earned a PhD from Cambridge University (UK), an MA from the University of Washington, and a BA from Willamette University.