In her role as Associate Dean, Lara Tohme oversees the Academic Advising Director program in the office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE). Academic Advising Directors are PhD-level, full-time professional academic advisors who are residentially assigned and work with all of Stanford’s undergraduate students. Academic Advising Directors can assist students with both routine and complex matters pertaining to academic requirements and policies, course selection and sequencing, investigating majors, research, fellowships, and post-graduate study.

Lara was born in Beirut, Lebanon and has lived and worked in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and both coasts of the United States. She earned her PhD in Architecture: History, Theory and Criticism from MIT, and has held numerous fellowships, including the Aga Khan Award for Architectural Studies at MIT and the Samuel H. Kress Fellowship at the American Center of Research in Amman, Jordan. Prior to coming to Stanford to join VPUE, Lara was a faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History at Wellesley College, where she also co-directed the Architecture Program. She has also taught at Dartmouth College and the Boston Architectural College.