Arroyo Named VCU Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs
Dear Colleagues:
I am pleased to announce that we have concluded our national search for the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs position. Accordingly, I offered the position to Andrew T. Arroyo, Ed.D. who has accepted it and begins work immediately. Dr. Arroyo has served in that role in an interim capacity for more than a year, promoting greater efficiency and planning in the academic enterprise.
Dr. Arroyo’s collaborative leadership style is enabling VCU’s academic enterprise to embrace technological innovation and leverage it to focus forward-looking academic strategy through shared governance. This past year, he convened two multidisciplinary teams from several schools and colleges to develop new minors in Mixed and Immersive Reality Studies and Practical Artificial Intelligence. Both minors will become the first of their kind in Virginia when they launch in the fall of 2024.
As part of a reorganization of VCU Online and Continuing and Professional Education within academic affairs, his team convened the university’s inaugural Instructional Innovation Council to bridge credit and non-credit space at VCU and launched VCU’s first credit-inclusive microcredentials.
Also over the past year, the academic affairs team led VCU through its decennial reaffirmation of institutional accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), improved VCU’s process for academic proposals requiring State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) approval and made significant strides toward institutionalizing Transformative Learning initiatives at VCU to make the Every Ram’s a Researcher vision a reality.
Dr. Arroyo has worked at VCU for more than five years, first joining the university as an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and as its inaugural Director for Academic Programs and Policy. He also served as the Assistant and Associate Vice Provost for Academic Programs for four years.
Prior to joining VCU, Dr. Arroyo worked at Norfolk State University, a public historically Black college or university (HBCU), for more than 11 years, serving as a tenured Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and inaugural Director for Student Pathways & Academic Formation. He also has community college experience, serving as an adjunct instructor at Tidewater Community College for more than a decade. Prior to entering higher education, Andrew spent 13 years working in non-profit community engagement and as an entrepreneur and fitness director for a national corporation.
Dr. Arroyo earned an Ed.D. in Higher Education and a Master’s degree from Regent University. He also completed undergraduate and graduate coursework in Philosophy and the Humanities at Old Dominion University.
His scholarly focus is on higher education with special emphasis on minority-serving institutions (MSIs). Dr. Arroyo developed the first and only HBCU-based student success theory in the literature, and recently developed a new approach for “swift futuring” in higher education. He has co-authored and co-edited four books and has been published in Journal of Futures Studies; Journal of Diversity in Higher Education; American Journal of Education; Journal of College Student Development; Journal of College Student Retention; Journal of Transformative Education; Spectrum: Journal on Black Men; Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, Learning Communities Journal, among others.
Please join me in congratulating Dr. Arroyo on this important new role!
Regards,
Fotis Sotiropoulos, Ph.D.
Provost and senior vice president for academic affairs
Categories Academic Affairs, Leadership Announcements