Provosts

Big Ten Academic Alliance Provosts

• Chair - Karen Hanson - University of Minnesota

  Karen Hanson became Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of Minnesota in February 2012. She received her B.A. degree in philosophy and mathematics from the University of Minnesota in 1970 and Ph.D. and A.M. degrees in philosophy from Harvard in 1980.

  Dr. Hanson came to the University of Minnesota from Indiana University where she served as Provost and Executive Vice President since August 2007. Dr. Hanson was on the staff of Indiana University-Bloomington from 1976 to 2007, serving the Philosophy Department from 1976 to 2001 in the capacity of Lecturer, Assistant, Associate and Full Professor. She was also department chair from 1997 to 2002 and has been a Rudy Professor since 2001. In 2002, she was named Dean of the Hutton Honors College. She also was an adjunct professor of gender studies, American studies and comparative literature.

  Dr. Hanson's principal research interests are in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, ethics, aesthetics and American philosophy. She has published many articles and essays in these areas and is the author of The Self Imagined: Philosophical Reflections on the Social Character of Psyche (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986) and a co-editor of Romantic Revolutions: Criticism and Theory (Indiana University Press, 1990).

  She has served on the Executive Committee of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association, as chair of the Board of Officers of the APA, and APA delegate to the American Council of Learned Societies. She also has been an associate editor of Journal of Social Philosophy, a member of the editorial board of American Philosophical Quarterly and a trustee for the American Society for Aesthetics. Her current editorial board memberships include Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews and Cognitio. She is an officer of the board of the John Dewey Foundation and a member of both the advisory and the editorial boards of the Peirce Edition Project.

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• Andreas Cangellaris - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  Andreas Cangellaris began serving as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on January 16, 2018. He earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985, having previously completed a master’s degree in electrical engineering at the Berkeley campus and an electrical engineering degree at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
  
  Dr. Cangellaris has served as head of the department of electrical and computer engineering since 2013. He continues to hold the position of M.E. Van Valkenburg Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He arrived at the Urbana campus in 1997 as a professor of electrical and computer engineering after serving as an assistant and then associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Arizona.
  
  Over the course of his 30-year academic career, Dr. Cangellaris’ focus has been on the fields of applied and computational electromagnetics; stochastic, multidomain physics modeling; and system-level electromagnetic compatibility. In addition to supervising 47 master’s students and 28 doctoral candidates, he has authored or co-written more than 280 referred journal and conference publications, and has led the development of several prototype tools for computer-aided analysis and design of RF, microwave and high-speed digital electronic systems.
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• Lauren Robel - Indiana University

  Lauren Robel began serving as Provost and Executive Vice President of Indiana University-Bloomington in July, 2012. She is a graduate of Auburn University and Indiana University Maurer School of Law.

   Lauren Robel has been Dean of the Indiana University School of Law since 2003. Prior to her appointment as dean, she served as Acting and Associate Dean from 1991-2002. She also served as Assistant, Associate and Full Professor of Law at the Indiana University Law School from 1985-2002. Prior to those appointments, she was Law Clerk for the Honorable Jesse Eschbach and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1983-85.

  Robel has also been a visiting faculty member at Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), where she published a book, Les États des Noirs: Fédéralisme et question raciale aux États-unis, (Presses Universitaires de France, 2000), with Professor Elisabeth Zoller.

  Lauren Robel's research focuses on the federal courts. Her articles have appeared in numerous leading law journals. She is a frequent speaker on topics ranging from procedural reform to sovereign immunity and co-author of Federal Courts: Cases and Materials on Judicial Federalism and the Lawyering Process (LEXISNEXIS 2005), a casebook on federal jurisdiction written with Arthur Hellman.

  She is currently President of the American Association of Law Schools, where she has served as a member of its Executive Committee since 2006. She is also a member of the Rules Advisory Committee for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

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• Montserrat Fuentes - University of Iowa

  Montserrat (Montse) Fuentes became the University of Iowa’s Executive Vice President and Provost on June 28, 2019. She received Bachelor of Science degrees in mathematics and statistics and in music and piano from the University of Valladolid, Spain, and a PhD in statistics from the University of Chicago. She completed postdoctoral studies in environmental sciences at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
  
  Prior to joining the University of Iowa, Dr. Fuentes served Virginia Commonwealth University in the roles of dean of the College of Humanities & Sciences and professor of statistics in the college, as well as professor of biostatistics in the School of Medicine. Before her time at Virginia Commonwealth University, Dr. Fuentes was head of the Department of Statistics and James M. Goodnight Distinguished Professor of Statistics at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. She also previously served as director of the Network on Statistical Methods in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (STATMOS), a National Science Foundation-funded center to promote multi-institutional and interdisciplinary research training at the interface of statistics and atmospheric and oceanic sciences, with 200 members and 21 affiliated institutions.
  
  Dr. Fuentes’ research interests include big data; brain-imaging analysis; statistics for spatial data; uncertainty analysis; computer models; and interdisciplinary applications in neurosciences, environmental sciences, and health sciences. She says she’s motivated by a desire to address scientific and societal problems in brain imaging, weather forecasting, climate change, air pollution and human health effects from pollution, as well as studies of pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes for both mother and child. 
  
  She has authored more than 100 scientific publications and served as principal or co-principal investigator on more than 20 research grants, with total funding of more than $25 million. 
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• Mary Ann Rankin - University of Maryland

  Mary Ann Rankin was named Senior Vice President and Provost of the University of Maryland in October 2012. She received her bachelor's degree in biology and chemistry from Louisiana State University, was a National Science Foundation pre-doctoral fellow at the University of Iowa and Imperial College Field Station, Ascot, England, and earned a doctorate in physiology and behavior from the University of Iowa in 1972.

  She was a National Institutes of Health post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University until joining The University of Texas at Austin in 1975 as an assistant professor of zoology. In 1986, she was promoted to professor. Dr. Rankin was chairman of the Division of Biological Sciences from 1989 until her appointment as dean of the College of Natural Sciences in 1994 to her departure in 2011.

  Dr. Rankin's research focuses on studies of the physiologic relationships governing the evolution of insect life history strategies. She is a member of the American Entomological Society, the Royal Entomological Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

  Rankin is currently CEO of the National Math and Science Initiative in Dallas. She serves on several non-profit boards including the Austin Lyric Opera and the Southwest Institute (one of the nation's largest, non-profit R&D firms in engineering and space sciences) as well as the Advisory Committee for the Division of Education and Human Resources at the National Science Foundation.

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• Martin A. Philbert – University of Michigan

  

  • Martin A. Philbert became Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Michigan in September 2017. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in 1984 from the College of Arts and Technology at Cambridge, and his doctorate in 1987 from the London University Royal Postgraduate Medical School. He was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship in the Neurotoxicology Laboratories at Rutgers University from 1988-90.

  Dr. Philbert is also professor of toxicology in the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Dr. Philbert served as a research assistant professor at Rutgers Neurotoxicology Laboratories until 1995 when he joined the faculty at the University of Michigan School of Public Health as an assistant professor of toxicology. He was promoted to associate professor in 2000 and to professor in 2004. He served as associate chair for research and development in the department of environmental health sciences from 2000-03. In 2004, Dr. Philbert was appointed senior associate dean for research of the School of Public Health, a position he held through 2010 when he was appointed as dean.

  As a faculty member, Dr. Philbert maintained a continuously federally funded portfolio of basic research activities. His research has focused on the development of flexible polymer nanoplatforms for optical sensing of ions and small molecules and the early detection and treatment of brain tumors. Other research interests include the mitochondrial mechanisms of chemically-induced neuropathic states. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Air Force and the National Cancer Institute. He is the author of more than 200 peer-reviewed scholarly manuscripts, abstracts and book chapters.

  Dr. Philbert served as the inaugural chair of the US-EPA Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee that provides peer review of risk assessments produced under the auspices of the EPA's Integrated Risk Information System and was a standing member of the Agency's Science Advisory Board. He also served a four-year term on the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, served as chair of the US-EPA Board of Scientific Counselors, chair of the US-FDA Science Advisory Board, and provides consultation to the federal agencies on a variety of issues surrounding emerging nanotechnologies, nanomedicine, health and safety.

  Dr. Philbert is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science (USA), a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), a fellow of the Academy of Toxicological Sciences (USA), a member of the Division of Earth and Life Sciences of the National Academy of Science (USA), the Committee on Toxicology of the National Research Council (USA).

    

   

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• Teresa Sullivan - Michigan State University

  Teresa A. Sullivan was named Interim Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Michigan State University effective October 2019. She received her undergraduate degree from Michigan State University's James Madison College, where she served as one of the first presidential fellows. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. She also received an honorary Doctor of Law degree from Michigan State University.
  
  In 1975, Dr. Sullivan joined the faculty at the University of Texas as a sociology instructor. While in Texas, she held a variety of academic and administrative posts including chair of the sociology department, Vice Provost, Vice President and Dean of Graduate Studies, and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. She served as Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Michigan from 2006-2010. In 2010, she was named President of the University of Virginia – a position she held until 2018.
  
  A demographer by training, Sullivan is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has written or co-written six books and over 80 scholarly articles in sociology. In 1990, she co-authored The Social Organization of Work with Randy Hodson, which was described as a "pathbreaking textbook in the sociology of work".   

   
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• Richard Moberly - University of Nebraska-Lincoln

  

  Richard Moberly became Interim Executive Vice Chancellor of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln on June 1, 2019. He received a bachelor of arts in history from Emory University and a doctor of law from Harvard Law School.

  Prior to joining the faculty at Nebraska, he was an Associate Attorney at McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2004, he joined the faculty of the University of Nebraska College of Law and is currently the Richard C. and Catherine S. Schmoker Professor of Law. After serving as interim dean and associate dean, he was named dean of the University of Nebraska College of Law in April 2017.

  In addition to teaching evidence and employment law courses, he is an active scholar whose research interests include employee whistleblower protection and the law of secrecy. He has published numerous articles on whistleblowing and retaliation, including an empirical study of Sarbanes-Oxley claims published in the William & Mary Law Review and an analysis of the Supreme Court's approach to retaliation cases, which was published in the Case Western Reserve Law Review.

  He has spoken internationally on whether corporate codes of ethics provide protection to whistleblowers and on the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower protections. In May 2007, he was invited by the United States House of Representatives to testify on his research and as an expert on federal whistleblower protections in a hearing before the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections entitled Private Sector Whistleblowers: Are There Sufficient Legal Protections? 

   

   
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• Jonathan Holloway - Northwestern University

  Jonathan Holloway began serving as Provost of Northwestern University on July 1, 2017. He received a bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Stanford University. He then went on to earn three advanced degrees from Yale, an M.A. in history, an M.Phil. in history and a Ph.D. in history.
  
  He began his academic career at the University of California, San Diego, before joining the faculty at Yale in 1999, becoming a full professor in 2004. Dr. Holloway won the William Clyde DeVane Award for Distinguished Scholarship and Teaching in Yale College in 2009 and the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award in 2014. He served as the master of Calhoun College from 2005-2014 and was Chair of the Council of Masters from 2009-2013. He began a three-year term as Chair of the Department of African American Studies in 2013. That term was abbreviated when he was named Dean of Yale College, beginning in July 2014.
  
  Additionally, Dr. Holloway was the Edmund S. Morgan Professor of African American Studies, History, and American Studies. He specialized in post-emancipation United States history with a focus on social and intellectual history. He is the author of Confronting the Veil: Abram Harris Jr., E. Franklin Frazier, and Ralph Bunche, 1919-1941 (2002) and Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America Since 1940 (2013), both published by the University of North Carolina Press. He edited Ralph Bunche’s A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership (NYU Press, 2005) and co-edited Black Scholars on the Line: Race, Social Science, and American Thought in the 20th Century (Notre Dame University Press, 2007). He has written an introduction for a new edition of W.E.B. DuBois’ Souls of Black Folk, published by Yale University Press in 2015, and is currently working on a new book, A History of Absence: Public Narratives, Race, and the Making of the Modern World.
  
  Holloway has held fellowships from the W.E.B. DuBois Research Institute at Harvard University, the Stanford Humanities Center and the Ford Foundation. He was an Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Fellow in 2011-2012. Currently, he is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. 

   

   

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• Bruce McPheron - Ohio State University

  Bruce A. McPheron was named Executive Vice President and Provost at The Ohio State University in June 2016. He earned his bachelor’s degree in entomology at Ohio State and a master's degree in biology and a doctorate in entomology at the University of Illinois.

  He joined The Ohio State University after serving for three and one-half years as Dean of Pennsylvania State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences. He served as chair of the Policy Board of Directors of Agriculture for the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. Currently, Dr. McPheron is a member of the Discovery Theme executive team and leads the university’s Food Production and Security theme. 

  Dr. McPheron’s research expertise focused on the use of genetic tools to examine population structure in pest insects. His molecular diagnostic methods for source identification of Mediterranean fruit fly developed in his laboratory have been adopted by USDA-APHIS and several state and international agencies. He has taught a wide range of classes in entomology and has traveled internationally sharing his expertise.

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• Nicholas P. Jones - Pennsylvania State University

  Nicholas P. Jones became the Executive Vice President and Provost of Pennsylvania State University on July 1, 2013. A native of New Zealand, he received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Auckland in 1980; he received master’s and doctoral degrees, also in civil engineering, from the California Institute of Technology in 1981 and 1986, respectively.

  Dr. Jones began his career as a member of the faculty in the Department of Civil Engineering at Johns Hopkins University in 1986 and was appointed chair of the department in 1999. He accepted a position as professor and head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2002, before returning to Johns Hopkins to take the role of dean in 2004. He was named the school’s inaugural Benjamin T. Rome Dean in 2008.

  He maintains professional associations with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the American Association for Wind Engineering, including service as president from 2009-2010. Throughout his career, he has received numerous awards both for teaching and research, including Johns Hopkins’ George Owen (1987) and Robert Pond (1991) teaching awards, an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award (1989); the ASCE’s Huber Research Prize (1997) and Robert H. Scanlan Medal (2007); and the JHU Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award (2007).

  Jones has served on a number of national committees, including ASCE’s National Infrastructure Policy Committee, the National Science Foundation’s blue-ribbon panel to review engineering research centers, and currently, the Public Policy Committee of the Engineering Deans Institute. From 1999 to 2004, he served as international editor of the Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics.

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• Jay T. Akridge - Purdue University

  Jay T. Akridge was named Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Diversity in November 2017. He received his doctorate in agricultural economics in 1986 from Purdue University specializing in marketing and finance. His master’s degree in agricultural economics with an emphasis in agribusiness management and finance is also from Purdue. Dr. Akridge earned his bachelor’s degree — a double major in agriculture and business administration — in 1982 from Murray State University in Murray, KY.
  
  Dr. Akridge was appointed Purdue University Dean of Agriculture in 2009, prior to being named dean, Dr. Akridge was the James and Lois Ackerman Professor of Agricultural Economics and served as Director of the Center for Food and Agricultural Business and the MS-MBA in food and agribusiness management (a partnership with the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University). He served as Interim Vice Provost for Engagement at Purdue in 2007–08.
  
  Dr. Akridge was named a University Faculty Scholar in 2000. In 1996, he received the Charles Murphy Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching — Purdue’s highest teaching award. He was added to the Purdue University Book of Great Teachers in 2003 and was also awarded the USDA Food and Ag Science Excellence in Teaching Award that year.
  
  His research has examined the buying behavior of commercial agricultural producers, innovations in marketing strategies by agribusiness firms, and adoption of new technology by agribusiness. He has worked with agribusiness managers in the areas of strategy and marketing in more than 20 countries including Lithuania, Hungary, Australia, Argentina, Cameroon, and China. 

   

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• Christopher Molloy - Rutgers University-New Brunswick

  

  Christopher J. Molloy was officially appointed the Chancellor for the Rutgers flagship campus in February, 2019. He had served as Interim Chancellor since July, 2018. Molloy received his bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from Rutgers and his doctoral degree from the joint Rutgers Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School/Graduate School–New Brunswick. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute.
  
  Dr. Molloy joined Rutgers in 2007 as dean of the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy. In 2011, he was appointed interim provost for biomedical and health sciences and successfully managed the complex integration of Rutgers and most of the former University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) in 2013. Molloy also served as interim chancellor of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences and then Senior Vice President for the Office of Research and Economic Development until his appointment as interim Chancellor. 
  
  At Rutgers, he holds a faculty position as Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology and is a member of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, the American Association for Cancer Research, and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the American Pharmacists Association. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2016.
  
  Prior to joining Rutgers, Molloy held senior research and management positions at Johnson & Johnson, 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals Inc., and Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute. He is also a licensed pharmacist in New Jersey. 
  
  

   

   

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• Karl Scholz - University of Wisconsin-Madison

  Karl Scholz became Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs of the University of Wisconsin-Madison on August 5, 2019. His undergraduate degree is from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and his PhD is from Stanford University. 

  Prior to this appointment, Dr.  Scholz was the Dean of the College of Letters & Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was named the Nellie June Gray Professor of Economic Policy in the department of economics, which he joined in 1988. He directed the Institute for Research on Poverty at University of Wisconsin–Madison from 2000-2004. In 1997-98, he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department, and from 1990-91 he was a senior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisors.

  Dr. Scholz researches on topics including household savings, the earned income tax credit and low-wage labor markets, financial barriers to higher education, and bankruptcy laws. His research has appeared in economics journals, including The American Economic Review, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, and the Review of Economic Studies.

  In 2007,Dr. Scholz and his colleagues, Ananth Seshadri and Surachai Khitatrakun, were awarded the twelfth annual TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security for their paper "Are Americans Saving 'Optimally' for Retirement." He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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