BCoE Distinguished Fellows 2026: Kari Babski-Reeves

Dr. Kari Babski-Reeves is currently the Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Tennessee. She is a proud three-time industrial engineering MSU alumna. She began her academic career in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech before returning to MSU in 2006.  She progressed through the professorial ranks and served as Graduate Coordinator for the industrial and systems engineering department from 2012-2015. She led efforts to create master’s-level concentrations and the development of the graduate student manual, which is used heavily today. She began as the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies for the BCOE in 2015 and assumed additional duties relating primarily to international and access and engagement programs in 2018.  In 2020, she was named department head of ISE while maintaining her role as associate dean until her departure from MSU in 2024. During her time as associate dean, research expenditures for the college nearly doubled, and the ISE department was one of the most productive departments in the college and across the university in nearly every metric, despite being one of the smallest on campus.

She served in many other leadership roles at MSU and nationally including IRB chair, Chair of the Graduate Catalog Review and Revision Committee, reviewer for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in the role of panel chair, member and ad hoc member, and was selected to serve on the National Occupational Research Agenda Musculoskeletal group, a group of leading researchers which set the national research agenda a each 10-year period.

Dr. Babski-Reeves says her experiences as a student, faculty member, and administrator at MSU have been instrumental in her success and her leadership style. She is married to Tory Reeves, a schoolteacher and coach at Starkville High, and is the proud mother of two children, Kyler, a senior at MSU in biochemistry, and Tanner, an active-duty US Marine.