Lisa Elfring is the Vice Provost for Instruction and Assessment at the University of Arizona. In this role, she leads the University Center for Assessment, Teaching, and Technology, collaborating with university leaders and campus collaborators including faculty, staff, and students to provide a vision and grow capacity for evidence-based teaching and learning assessment across all University of Arizona courses and campuses. 

Lisa’s faculty affiliation is in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Department, where she is a continuing-status specialist in biology education. Her scholarly interests lie in supporting instructors as they implement evidence-based teaching strategies to promote equitable outcomes for all learners. She is a faculty member of the BIO5 Institute, where she promotes workforce development and involvement in research for high-school students through the KEYS program. In over 25 years of teaching at the University of Arizona, she has taught over 10,000 students including high-school research interns, undergraduate biology students and teachers in training, medical students, middle- and high-school biology teachers pursuing master’s degrees in STEM teaching, and PhD students. Her contributions to the teaching ecosystem at the University of Arizona have been recognized by awards from the University of Arizona Honors College and College of Science. She continues to teach biology as her position allows.

Her educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in Biology and a PhD in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology from UC Santa Cruz and a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Science at MIT. She serves as an active Fellow in the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education (PULSE), where she and colleagues promote departmental transformation in STEM departments across North America to promote better student outcomes in STEM courses.