Kristin Alexis Olson, M.D.
Associate Dean for Curriculum and Medical Education
A professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, Kristin Olson, M.D., serves as the Associate Dean of Curriculum and Medical Education for the UC Davis School of Medicine and Vice Chair of Education for her department. After earning a Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of California, Berkeley, Olson earned her Doctor of Medicine degree at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, completed an anatomic and clinical pathology residency at the University of New Mexico and finished with a surgical pathology fellowship with emphasis in gastrointestinal pathology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She joined the faculty of the University of California, Davis School of Medicine in 2011.
As a highly experienced educator familiar with a wide range of pedagogy, Olson has won numerous teaching awards from medical students, residents and fellow physicians and staff. She is passionate about the many facets of medical education, including curriculum design and integration, cognitive load theory, meaningful assessment and feedback, faculty development, relationship building between faculty and administration and change management. Immediately after her appointment as curriculum dean, she led the I-EXPLORE design process, culminating in an accelerated implementation of the new curriculum by 2023. She also served as the Faculty Accreditation Leader for the school's LCME accreditation visit in 2022.
Olson is the incoming chair of the Undergraduate Medical Educators Council of the Association for Academic Pathology and has served on multiple National Board of Medical Examiner committees.
In clinical practice, Olson is a gastrointestinal and hepatic surgical pathologist who provides adult and pediatric patients with tissue-based diagnosis. She has special clinical interest in eosinophilic esophagitis, multiple forms of colitis including inflammatory bowel disease and cancers of the gastrointestinal tract and liver. Her current scholarly work primarily focuses on medical education, artificial intelligence/machine learning and primary sclerosing cholangitis surveillance.
A native of Northern California, Olson’s favorite pastimes include cultivating her Mediterranean garden and many fruit trees, reading a wide range of books, fostering and rehabilitating animals and being a wife to her husband and mother to three children.