Dr. Brianne Hobbs is the new dean of Midwestern University’s Chicago College of Optometry. She graduated from UMSL’s College of Optometry in 2010. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Brianne Hobbs)

Dr. Brianne Hobbs has always loved education. When Hobbs was growing up, her mom taught math at her K-8 school in West Plains, Missouri, and she found herself spending lots of free time in her classroom.

A decade later, while studying in the College of Optometry at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, Hobbs realized that she couldn’t picture herself going into private practice. Teaching optometry, on the other hand, was an exciting prospect.

“I was kind of thinking, ‘Well, I really love school, and I love being in optometry school, but what am I going to do after this?’” she said. “And then I started tutoring some of my classmates, first informally, and then formally. I was like, ‘Oh, this is exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to be in optometric education.’ And it was just the best possible combination of those two elements for me.”

Hobbs, who graduated from UMSL’s College of Optometry in 2010, has spent the past 15 years carving out a career in optometric education. And this fall, she’s embarking on a new chapter as dean of Midwestern University’s Chicago College of Optometry. Her new role as dean includes overseeing college operations, strategic planning and creating a vision for moving the college forward in collaboration with faculty and upper administration. She aims to foster faculty vitality and create an environment where both faculty and students can thrive.

Hobbs is excited to return to the university where she started her career, having previously worked as an associate professor and director of residencies at the university’s Arizona College of Optometry from 2011 to 2019. She moved to Phoenix immediately after completing a residency in ocular disease and low vision at the Kansas City VA Medical Center and helped build the new college’s internal and external residency programs.

Most recently, Hobbs served as associate dean of academics at High Point University’s School of Optometry, which gave her the opportunity to help build an optometry school from the ground up.

“I was the first person hired after the dean, so to get to see all of the groundwork and understand how the foundation for the school is created was just a really unique opportunity,” she said. “I really love the building aspect of things – getting to walk into a situation where there’s all these different possibilities, and you just have to chase them down and figure out what the priorities are.”

Working in optometric education is exactly where she wants to be, and Hobbs considers her experience in the College of Optometry at UMSL as the first stepping stone to determining that path. She loved the small class sizes, which allowed her to get to know her classmates and build strong relationships with her professors, including one of her longtime mentors, Dr. Julie DeKinder.

Tutoring fellow classmates gave her the opportunity to learn more about teaching, and while it wasn’t a formal educational instruction, the experience helped her find her passion in optometry. She was able to build on those skills learning from Dr. Timothy Harkins during her fourth-year residency at the Kansas City VA Medical Center, which she feels set her up well for being a faculty member in the next phase of her journey.

Throughout her career, Hobbs has maintained strong UMSL connections, from Dr. Anne Ream, who gave her a technician position at her clinic in Hobbs’ hometown of West Plains and set her on a path in optometry, to current and former faculty members such as Dr. Ed Bennett, DeKinder, Dr. Vinita Henry, Dr. Aaron Franzel and Dr. Linda Marks, who she’s been able to reconnect with as she moves through different phases of her career. Today, she’s proud to represent UMSL as one of the first optometry alums to become a dean.

“At all these different points in my career, I’ve always had that connection back to UMSL, even in unexpected ways,” she said. “Being able to represent UMSL as an alum is just really meaningful to me because of the connections and relationships I had with the faculty and with my classmates. It has been such an honor to represent UMSL in all phases of my career because it is the program that first believed in me and gave me chance to enter the profession. The support from the faculty in those formative years of my education helped me find my place in optometry and I will always be grateful for their encouragement. They helped me create the vision for my career.”