Laurie P. Dishman earned a Bachelor of Arts from Carson-Newman College (1993) with majors in mathematics and French and a minor in music. She earned her Master of Arts (1995) and Doctor of Philosophy (1998) in mathematics from Vanderbilt University. She began teaching at Cumberland University in August 1998. In 1999, Dr. Dishman also became the Director of the Learning Center @ Cumberland University until 2004 when it closed. From 2008 to 2013, she served as the Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences (SLAS). She has been the Program Director for mathematics since 2008. In January 2018, Dr. Dishman assumed the role of Executive Director of Institutional Effectiveness.

At Cumberland, Dr. Dishman has taught many different courses, including Foundations of Scholarship and Learning for new freshmen and mathematics courses at all levels. Her favorite courses to teach are the calculus sequence and Abstract Algebra. She has served on the Faculty Senate, Institutional Effectiveness Committees, the Admissions Committee, the Financial Aid Student Appeals Committee, the Benefits Committee, the University’s curriculum committee, and many others. While Dean of the SLAS, she served on the Deans’ Council, the Executive Management Team, the 2010 SACS Leadership Team, and the 2010 SACS Compliance Audit Committee, as well as various faculty search committees. She served on the SACSCOC Fifth Year Report writing team in 2015 as well as the writing team for the SACSCOC decennial review in 2020. She has completed training to serve as a SACSCOC peer evaluator in institutional effectiveness and served on her first on-site team in the spring of 2022.

Dr. Dishman enjoys taking students to the Mathematical Association of America-Southeastern Section (MAA-SE) conference meetings each spring, where they can participate in many undergraduate activities as well as present their own work in poster sessions or undergraduate talks. She also served as the Tennessee State Director for the MAA-SE from 2014 to 2017.