The College of Science welcomes Lyn Riverstone as interim Assistant Dean for Academic and Student Affairs in our College. She will continue to serve as an academic advisor in the Department of Mathematics where she also coordinates math placement.
She has served as a senior mathematics instructor and academic advisor at OSU and brings more than 20 years of experience teaching mathematics at the university and at community college.
“I am happy to welcome Lyn as our interim Assistant Dean for Academic and Student Affairs,” said Sastry G. Pantula, dean of the College of Science. “I know her passion for student success and excellence in science will make a positive difference on our students and in our community of OneScience.”
The Assistant Dean position is an integral part of the Executive Leadership Team working closely with the Dean, Associate Deans, unit Heads, Marketing Director, faculty, and staff to advance the mission of the College. Specifically, this position is responsible for implementing the strategic plan of the College and leading the faculty in development of policies and programs to improve undergraduate student success and equalization by closing gaps in degree completion for Pell-eligible, First Generation, and Underrepresented Students in the science disciplines within the College.
“I am honestly excited about every one of the duties as assistant dean!” said Riverstone. “But I’m especially excited about the opportunities to collaborate with colleagues and students across campus to develop and to continuously improve the experiential learning programs in our College.”
Riverstone will split her time between directing advising and developing and managing experiential learning programs. She will serve as Director of Advising and supervise the Head Advisor in the College. In addition, she will help lead the College’s efforts for continuous improvement of undergraduate academic programs and will support student success and equalization, which includes recruitment, orientation, first- and second-year experience programs, living learning communities, and diversity initiatives.
Most recently, Riverstone began serving on the College Algebra implementation team of the project, “All Hands on Deck: Adaptive Learning Transformation,” part of the APLU grant managed by Julie Greenwood, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies in the Division of Undergraduate Studies. The project will implement adaptive courseware in eight of OSU’s high enrollment general education courses that act as predictors of attrition and lay the foundation to scale-up the use of this courseware to support undergraduate student success.
For the last three years, Riverstone has taught INTO OSU Pathway students, implementing active-learning strategies—clickers, flipped classroom, personalized homework, and classroom discussion of student work—to help increase the success of our international students. She also led the implementation of ALEKS, the adaptive math placement assessment, and coordinated OSU’s mathematics placement program.
With an extensive record of leadership and service, Riverstone served as a trustee on the Board of Education of Linn-Benton Community College. In addition, she served on an instructional design team for the Oregon Mathematics Leadership Institute, a 5-year NSF-funded project. The intensive 3-week summer institute deepens K- 12 teachers’ content knowledge of mathematics and helps develop their leadership skills.
Riverstone earned her master’s degree in mathematics with a math education option at OSU and her bachelor’s degree at California State University, Sacramento.
