Holly Rivers

Holly Rivers is the Associate Director of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, where she develops and administers all undergraduate programs. She has 20 years’ experience creating and developing programs for undergraduate students interested in research and development. In the past two decades she has worked to develop programs that are responsive to the needs and interests of our students and faculty. She manages four experiential learning programs for independent research and internships in multiple countries around the world. Since 2002, she has worked with over 700 students to help them develop independent research and experiential opportunities and has led orientations to prepare them for these experiences. Her students work in as many as 25-30 different countries each summer. She received the University of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters Award of Appreciation in 2014 and the Dockweiler Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising in 2008.

Working with Professor Fran Hagopian, Holly created the Kellogg International Scholars Program, which has become the most competitive research program for undergraduates on campus. In the program, undergraduates serve as research assistants for faculty. The program is now highly competitive, with about a quarter of students accepted from the application pool each year, and the students are in high demand by the faculty. Since the program’s inception, almost 300 students have graduated from the program. That pool of alumni now participates in virtual talks as well as advising sessions with current students of the program and now even have hired recent graduates of the program. Given its success, she recently created a new program, the Kellogg Developing Researchers Program, which allows undergraduate students the opportunity to engage in research with the Institute on a more temporary basis. In its first year, 61 students have been accepted into the program and 20 are currently working as research assistants to faculty.

In addition, Rivers taught the Moreau First Year Experience course for four years. The program helps Notre Dame’s youngest students transition to college life by integrating their academic, co-curricular and residential experiences, relying on the five pillars of a Holy Cross education: mind, heart, zeal, family and hope. Holly served from 1994 to 1996 as an English teacher with the Peace Corps in Gabon, where she collaborated with the Gabonese Ministry of Education to create the country’s first series of textbooks for middle and high school students learning English. She later helped develop the AmeriCorps program at Indiana University Kokomo and worked as a high school English teacher in North Carolina and Arizona. She holds an MA in international affairs from Ohio University and a BA in English from Milligan College.