Kara Gardner earned her Ph.D. in music and humanities from Stanford University. As a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities, she taught for four years in Stanford’s Introduction to the Humanities Program. She has designed and led classes on popular music, music of the Americas, music and gender, and dance history at the University of San Francisco and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 2008, she received a teaching award for innovative pedagogy and commitment to student learning from USF. She joined the Minerva Schools at KGI in the fall of 2013 and previously served as the Associate Dean of Faculty Development.