Dr. Catrine Tudor-Locke

I was born and raised on a farm on the outskirts of Lethbridge, a small city in Southern Alberta, Canada,
just an hour north of the Montana border. I could see the Rocky Mountains from my bedroom window
and spent a great deal of time growing up in Waterton National Park, just on the Canadian side of
Glacier National Park in the U.S.

I completed all my formal education in Canada, including a bachelor’s degree from the University of
Lethbridge, a master’s from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia (where I met my husband,
Gerald), and a doctoral degree from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. My husband and I
entered the U.S. in 2000 for me to do a post-doc at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC.
Although we had visited the U.S. many times in our lives, living here revealed the very many small and
large differences that exist when compared with my Canadian homeland. It was our intention at the
time to complete my training and get back to Canada as quickly as possible.

But my career took us in a different direction: my first tenure track position at Arizona State University,
followed by a stint as an entrepreneurial scientist at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, then a department Chair and subsequently an Associate Dean for Research and
Administration at UMass Amherst before arriving here at UNC Charlotte in 2019 to take up the Deanship
for the College of Health and Human Services. Along the way my nonimmigrant status in the U.S.
evolved slowly and sequentially from J1 scholar, to H1B1, to Green Card holder.

During the H1B1 days (approximately 2 years) my husband was not permitted to work so that is when
we got our first dog! Eventually, with much patience, paperwork, standing in lines, annual interviews,
fingerprinting, photographing, test taking, and English language assessments, both Gerald and I became
naturalized U.S. citizens in 2012. I still recall one particularly anxiety provoking event when Gerald was
denied re-entry into the U.S. after visiting Canada because the U.S. customs officers did not believe we
were married (he is Locke, I am Tudor-Locke) and that I was supporting him while he wasn’t working.
Our immigration lawyer saved the day and we were quickly reunited. I always joked that it was easier
getting my dog across the border with just a rabies document than Gerald, who always traveled outside
the U.S. with a file folder of documents and a lawyer’s business card.

My early beginnings and formal training in Canada have shaped who I am. My pathway to citizenship is a
story shared by many other immigrants, but never really the same. And although I found my home here
in the U.S., and even more so here in Charlotte, North Carolina, even after all these years, I still
pronounce a few words that sound odd to the American ear as I’m regularly told!

Catrine Tudor-Locke, Dean of the UNC Charlotte College of Health and Human Services