Gita Bangera

Gita Bangera, PhD, mostly recently served as the first Dean of the Connected Learning Division at Bellevue College. She founded the RISE Learning Institute developing it from concept to successful implementation to bring high impact practices such as Research, Project, and Service based learning to students across all disciplines. She has also served as the Interim Vice President of Instruction and Acting Co-President. She has served as a working group co-lead for the Accelerating Systemic Change Network, an Aspen Institute Rising Presidents Fellow and Advisory Board Member for the State-wide Faculty of Color Mentoring program.

Dr. Bangera has raised more than $1M in grant funding from the National Science Foundation, and helped obtain state funding for almost $1M in state-of-the-art lab equipment. She is one of the original 39 PULSE leadership fellows impacting science education at the national level. She was the director of the ComGen project that has created a community of practice for Classroom based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) with faculty from 27 higher education institutions in Washington. She is the Principal Investigator on a NSF grant to create a state-wide undergraduate research consortium.

Dr. Bangera is also an inventor and technical consultant 46 issued patents and over 110 patent applications and a small business owner.

Previously Dr. Bangera was a Senior Scientist at Combimatrix Corporation and conducted Post-doctoral Research at Harvard Medical School, University of Washington Medical School, and University of Copenhagen. She received her doctorate in Microbiology at Washington State University, Master’s in Biology from Carnegie Mellon University and a Master’s in Microbiology from University of Mumbai.