Dr. Katie Conrad holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Child & Family Studies from the University of Tennessee and serves as a Specialist with UT Extension. Since 2016, she has co-led more than $3 million in competitive state and federal Out-of-School Time (OST) grants funded by the Department of Education and USDA. Since their inception in 2005, these projects have served more than 11,000 students through before- and after-school programming. At their peak, the grants supported ten programs in seven counties, where Dr. Conrad directed operations, evaluation, and supervision of approximately 75 OST teachers and contractors.

She is currently Co-Investigator on Nourish Recovery, a 2024 UT Grand Challenge Grant project, where she is co-authoring a trauma-informed nutrition education curriculum in partnership with nutrition faculty. The curriculum will be piloted in Fall 2025 and evaluated later in the year. Beginning in October 2025, she will serve as Principal Investigator for the SPARK youth relationship education grant funded by the Tennessee Department of Health. This project will deliver programming in rural counties, pilot a hybrid online delivery model through a new learning management system, and prepare for future statewide scale-up.

Dr. Conrad’s professional interests include mental health education, substance use recovery, program evaluation, and school- and community-based interventions. She regularly provides professional development training for adult learners in human development and family studies and is a member of the third cohort of the Tennessee Extension Leadership Academy (TELA). She is certified as a Youth Mental Health First Aid Instructor (2023) and Adult Mental Health First Aid Instructor (2025).