Education

PhD, Industrial-organizational Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology

MS, Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology.

BS, Psychology, University of Illinois-Chicago

Biography

Ilianna H. Kwaske, Ph.D. is Interim Dean at the School of Professional Advancement. Dr. Kwaske is an industrial/organizational psychologist with over fifteen years of experience in higher education and business consulting. Her teaching and administrative roles have been in programs designed for working adults. A passionate educator, Dr. Kwaske has been committed to teaching and learning in various modalities, whether through evening on-ground courses, online, weekend intensive, or hybrid (online & on-ground) courses. In her previous roles, she has led teams that have developed and launched innovative, high-quality academic programs in organizational leadership, industrial organizational psychology, and business psychology. With a strong quantitative foundation in assessment and testing, Dr. Kwaske is also very interested in program evaluation, identifying and measuring learning outcomes.

Dr. Kwaske applies psychology in various contexts, in higher education as an administrator and professor, and in her previous experiences as a consultant. As an independent consultant, she has conducted psychological assessments for executive searches, employee selection and development, and she has helped leaders manage organizational change. Dr. Kwaske also served as a principal in her husband’s architecture practice examining the interaction of people and their space. In that role, she directed the programming efforts from a psychological perspective to understand client needs to inform the design of a space.

From a young age, Dr. Kwaske knew she wanted to be a psychologist and change agent to help solve problems. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from University of Illinois-Chicago, and a master of science in psychology with a specialization in clinical psychology and Ph.D. in industrial-organizational psychology from Illinois Institute of Technology.

The daughter of Cuban immigrants, Dr. Kwaske was born and raised in Chicago, which was her hometown for much of her life. With her husband who is an architect and their two children, she now enjoys living in New Orleans, a city she grew to love from her first visit in the summer of 2000.