Nicola Foote

Nicola Foote, Ph.D., is Dean of the David C. Frederick Honors College and Bernice L. and Morton S. Lerner Chair in Honors Education at the University of Pittsburgh. She joined the Honors College in 2021 when it was named the University Honors College and helped close a transformative naming gift from Pitt’s first Rhodes Scholar, David Frederick, that led to the renaming of the college as the David C. Frederick Honors College (FHC) in 2022.  Foote has steered the college through a period of extraordinary growth and transformation that led to the FHC receiving formal recognition as one of the top honors colleges in the nation in 2024. She has overseen a more than 600% increase in student enrollment; led the establishment of new units within the Honors College including Honors advising, the Office of National Scholarships Advising and Post-Graduation Success, Student Services, Social Innovation, and Community-Engaged Learning; established a new Honors LLC in University Hall; created the Electus Faculty Fellows program; launched high-impact engagement programs, including City Honors, the Frederick Bowl, and the Experts-in-Residence program; implemented the use of co-currricular enrichment contracts; and established the David C. Frederick Honors College at Pitt-Greensburg. She facilitated notable firsts in Pitt’s student awards success, including the naming of Pitt’s first ever Mitchell Scholar, our first ever Soros Scholar, and Pitt’s inaugural naming as a Top Boren Producer. Foote also holds a faculty appointment as Professor in Pitt’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.  

Before arriving at Pitt, Foote served as Vice Dean of Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University (ASU), widely considered to be the nation’s top Honors College. At ASU, she provided strategic leadership for 7500 students across four campuses and guided 170 honors-only faculty and staff and over 2,000 honors college affiliated faculty. She led the pilot program for the expansion of Barrett’s academic and co-curricular programs to the ASU-Online campus, which lead to the establishment of the first fully online Honors experience available anywhere in the world. She also previously served as Associate Dean for University-wide Programs and Faculty Engagement and Chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Florida Gulf Coast University, where she won multiple awards for her teaching, mentoring and administrative leadership. 

Foote’s research interests focus on race and state formation in Ecuador, Caribbean migration to South America, histories of reproductive health care access in Florida and human-animal relations in the Galapagos Islands. She holds a Ph.D. in history from University College London, a master’s degree from the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of London and a bachelor’s degree in history of the Americas, also from University College London. Foote was a first-generation college student and is passionate about access and inclusion in higher education.