Dr. Julie Schell is the Assistant Vice Provost of Academic Technology and the Director of the Office of Academic Technology at The University of Texas at Austin. She oversees the University's technology-enhanced learning ecosystem and works to advance teaching and learning through the strategic use of academic technology. She is also an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Departments of Design and Educational Leadership and Policy, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on learning experience design. In her current studios, Dr. Schell and her students are partnering with generative AI to prototype speculative objects and environments designed to improve teaching and learning in education settings. 

Dr. Schell is also an award-winning college teaching and learning expert with over 25 years of expertise in higher education. She has delivered over 100 talks, workshops, and keynotes on teaching and learning. She is the creator of Think Before You Design Think­?, a popular introductory human-centered design curriculum she first launched at AT&T and has delivered at Fortune 500 companies and non-profit organizations throughout the United States. Dr. Schell's approach to design thinking focuses on using the principles of learning science to develop design thinking self-efficacy, especially among non-designers. She has supported thousands of new learners in their journey to understand and apply human-centered design to improve lived experiences.

Before joining the Provost's office, Dr. Schell served as the Assistant Dean of Instructional Continuity and Innovation at the College of Fine Arts, where she led the transition to online learning for over 200 arts and design faculty and academic staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Schell completed her doctorate in higher and postsecondary education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a four-year post-doctoral fellowship focused on the science of teaching and learning in the Mazur Group at Harvard University. Her dissertation, dedicated to improving undergraduate teaching and learning, won the Dissertation of the Year award for the American Educational Research Association's higher education division.  She has held positions at the nation's top research universities, including Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and Harvard.