Kristin Oberheide

Dr. Kristin Oberheide is the Director of the Office of International Affairs (OIA). The OIA Team provides international student and scholar compliance services and a variety of auxillary support to a robust clientele and stakeholders, prior to, during, and post-completion of on-campus engagement. Our team operates in a fast-paced, high-demand environment, often with rapid and unexpected external change. We work to improve experiences across the Pratt community by identifying priority areas of need and implementing client-centered interventions and improvements. How to contact OIA and how to give OIA feedback.

Dr. Oberheide’s first experience in international education was an epically challenging junior year abroad, and the next was a data-entry job using the SEVIS system of the newly formed U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In the two decades since, Kristin continued life as a professional, academic, and person in roles with diverse R1 institutions, non-profits, and the federal government. Kristin’s experience includes strategic planning, qualitative and quantitative assessment, policy analysis and advocacy, international enrollment management, international collaboration and agreements, umbrella fellowship administration, research scholar development, organizational restructuring, community programming, crisis response on broad and individual scales, and travel in nearly 50 countries.

In the past five years at Pratt, Kristin regularly interprets complex scenarios and finds solutions, reduces operational “sludge,” promotes intergroup collaboration and communication, and engages in anti-racist, de-colonialist, and anti-xenophobic efforts. Kristin is passionate about improving overall campus climate, promoting mental health and safety in our community, and continual self-education, advocacy, and allyship efforts to marginalized community members, including non-U.S citizens, English learners, Asian and AAPI members, and U.S./NYC newcomers.

Within technical expertise, research focus, and everyday interactions, Dr. Oberheide engages with border crossing themes, transcendence or elimination of barriers/limitations, and exploration of liminal spaces: governmental, cultural, lingual, interpersonal, generational, categorical, psychological, systemic, time, etc. Kristin challenges traditional boundaries between the private and professional by embracing self-authenticity in intersectional identity areas including being multiply neurodivergent, chronically ill, non-heteronormative, and White with socioeconomic and birthplace status privilege.

Kristin enjoys biking through Brooklyn, community cat trap-neuter-releasing (TNR), volunteering with Providence House as an Associate Board Member, and writing as creative expression. While Kristin’s personal aesthetic is minimalist, her favorite well-known artwork is Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.

EdD, Education Leadership and Adminstration, University of Texas – El Paso

MPA, Government, Politics, and Policy, Cornell University

BA, Psychology and German Literature majors, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor

The International Student Experience Interview Project (2023, 2021). Pratt Institute, not for publication, internal reports available upon request.

The International Student Border Commuter Experience: An Investigation On The Southern U.S. Border (2022). The University of Texas – El Paso, Doctoral Dissertation, available online. Outstanding Dissertation of the Year Award (2023).