Sarah Crawford-Parker

Since 2019, Sarah Crawford-Parker has served as the director of the University Honors Program. Drawing on her prior experiences as KU’s Assistant Vice Provost for First-Year Experience and a special assistant to the provost, she guides strategic planning and management of the program with an emphasis on the development of high-quality learning initiatives. She was part of the 2020 leadership team that created and launched Common Cause, a signature experience that focuses each year on a UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), and she has prioritized the development of a four-year program framework, Your Honors Path.

Dr. Crawford-Parker is also an art historian with concentrations in seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art and the arts of sub-Saharan Africa. Her scholarly interests and teaching focus on the legacies of collecting and display of African material culture in European and American museums, as well as the role that contemporary African artists play in activating dialogues about restitution.

Crawford-Parker specializes in the development of faculty-museum collaborations to deepen student learning. She has co-facilitated projects with KU’s Spencer Museum of Art, the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Institute, the Dole Institute of Politics, and the KU Libraries. Additionally, she has taught museum-based study abroad programs in Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.