Dr. Hillary M. Van Dyke is a Florida native. She was born in Miami and relocated to Indiana with her parents when she was in middle school. After graduating from high school, she attended Purdue University where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English education in 2007. After graduating, she taught middle school language arts. In 2012, She moved back to Florida and continued to teach 8th grade language arts at Azalea Middle School (AMS). While at AMS, she obtained a master’s degree in educational leadership from the University of South Florida- St Petersburg. After graduating, she worked as a district administrator for Pinellas County Schools. During this work, she was inspired to pursue her doctoral degree at the University of South Florida. In May 2024, she graduated with her PhD in education. In August 2024, she started a role as a visiting professor of education at the University of Tampa. She is now an assistant professor at the University of Tampa.
While education is her first love, Dr. Van Dyke has a fondness for community work which includes her volunteerism and independent contracting efforts. The following are just a small part of that list. She co-founded the Green Book of Tampa Bay in 2019 with her friend Joshua Bean. Since 2016, she has been involved in work to get Black people more involved in the outdoors from leading events to her filmmaking. She also has led many efforts to plan and install art and history exhibits as well as planning community engagement around them.
Dr. Van Dyke’s hobbies include being in nature through hiking, biking, or paddleboarding; traveling to different countries; cosplaying and forcing her friends to cosplay with her; watching nerdy TV shows and movies; listening to audiobooks, podcasts, and vinyl records; and spending countless hours texting, facetiming, and talking to her parents or her little brother and sister.
Along with her many titles, the one she is most proud is being an aunt.
Dr. Hillary Van Dyke 