Alyssa Crittenden is the Vice Provost for Graduate Education and the Dean of the Graduate College at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), where she provides strategic leadership for graduate and postdoctoral education. As dean, she oversees institution-wide initiatives focused on graduate access, mentoring, retention, timely degree completion, and workforce preparation, with particular attention to building durable, scalable infrastructure that improves graduate and professional student experiences and outcomes.

She is the principal leader of UNLV’s Sloan Centers for Systemic Change (SCSC) initiative, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which advances comprehensive admissions, evidence-based mentoring practices, and coordinated graduate pathways in the physical sciences and engineering. Her leadership has positioned UNLV as a national model for systems-level reform in graduate education. She currently serves on the Equity in Graduate Education (EGE) Steering Committee through the Pullias Center for Higher Education, contributing to national conversations shaping the future of graduate education.

A biological anthropologist by training, Crittenden maintains an active research profile focused on human evolution, cooperation, and well-being through long-standing community-based research among the Hadza of Tanzania. Her research explores the relationship between behavior, reproduction, and the environment (ecological, political, and social) with an emphasis on nutrition and maternal and infant health and well-being. She is the recipient of the Conrad Arensberg Award from the American Anthropological Association for furthering anthropology as a natural science.