Divya

Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation & Global Engagement | Professor of Global Media Studies, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences

Dr. Divya McMillin  (Ph.D. 1998, Indiana University Bloomington) is Professor of Global Media Studies and Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Global Engagement. McMillin has been featured as The Builder and Innovator for her creation and development of global curricular pathways that integrate academic and experiential learning, centering community-led solutions. McMillin is founder of the SIAS Communication major (2000), Global Honors Program, Minor in Global Engagement and microcredentials in Global Leadership and Global Citizenship; the Minor in Innovation and Design, the NextGen Civic Leader Corps microcredential, and the highly successful, revenue generating Global Innovation and Design (GID) Lab (2018) with its Internship and Design Thinking microcredential, and the rebranded Institute for Innovation and Global Engagement (IIGE, 2020). Academic pathways and professional programs include dedicated faculty and staff across UW Tacoma Schools committed to the IIGE's signature of global engagement and inclusive innovation. 

McMillin is Associate Faculty of the South Asia Center and Affiliate Faculty of the Center for Global Studies in the UW Seattle Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. She is also Guest Lecturer and Global Expert in the London School of Economics MSc Cities Programme, delivering modules in Innovative Leadership Through Design Thinking. 

McMillin’s pivotal work on the impact of satellite television on audiences and the television format industry across the world have led to three critically acclaimed books: International Media Studies (Wiley, 2007), Mediated Identities: Youth, Agency, and Globalization (Peter Lang, 2009), and the anthology Place, Power, Media (Peter Lang, 2018). Her analyses of global cities and convergence technologies are widely published in top-tiered journals and anthologies, meriting her Top Paper Awards from the International Communication Association. She is ​the only faculty to receive all three distinguished awards: the Distinguished Research Award (2012), ​the Distinguished Teaching Award (2017), ​and the Community Engagement Legacy Award (2021).  

Certified through Stanford University’s Innovation Masters Series (2019), McMillin is lead facilitator for the GID Lab, with such clients as the Washington State Department of Health, UW Medicine CoLab, Washington Student Achievement Council, United Way of Pierce County, the Tacoma Pierce County Chamber of Commerce, Tacoma Pierce County Economic Development Board, and the City of Tacoma, to name a few. She has served as Cartus consultant for Russell Investments, Philips, and Siemens, as program consultant for the National Collegiate Honors Council and the American Association of Colleges and Universities, and is a member of the Multicare Health Foundation Board of Directors. 

In her free time, McMillin is a bass player for two rock bands and travels the world.