Renate Crawford

Renate Crawford started as Miami University’s ambassador and adjunct professor of physics July 1, 2016.

Upon receiving her doctorate in physics at Kent State University, Renate became a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Biomolecular Engineering at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. She completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford University and began her career as a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts, where she later became chair of the department of physics, then associate dean of engineering.

Renate was the senior academic advisor in academic affairs at Saint Mary's College and, in August 2011, joined the University of Notre Dame as an adjunct associate professor of physics and in 2013 added the role of Director of Engagement for Academic Recruitment. She has nearly 30 scientific and teaching publications and is co-inventor on three U.S. patents. Renate is known for her work in studio teaching, where experiential learning is used to bring practical laboratory concepts to students integrated throughout the lectures. She has a passion for health and wellness on campus, programs focused on low income students and student success, and recruitment and retention of underrepresented students in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.

President Crawford met Renate while they were earning their doctorates at Kent State.  Renate is the author of numerous scholarly publications about Confined Liquid Crystals. Her sister is a “Miami Merger.” Greg and Renate are the proud parents of two daughters, Michaela (age 22) and Ally (age 19).  Michaela graduated from the University of Notre Dame in May 2017, with a major in economics and minors in poverty studies and sociology and is currently a project assistant at a law firm in Chicago. In 2017-2018, Ally is in her second year at the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in biology. Both daughters have been actively involved in the Crawfords' fundraising efforts for Niemann-Pick Type C disease and breast cancer and are excited to be part of the Miami family.