Office of the Provost

Dear VCU faculty: Thank you for all that you do to help students and advance VCU’s academic mission. Evidence of your accomplishments can be seen across the university: increased student enrollment, rising national rankings, and growing sponsored research. I appreciate your commitment to teaching and fostering critical thinking among our diverse students. I also recognize […]

Dear VCU Faculty and Staff: This month marked the third anniversary of my appointment as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at VCU. Thanks to you, these past three years have been the most exciting and rewarding of my career. Yet, I promise you that our best days are yet to come. Together, […]

Dear Colleagues, It is my pleasure to share with you the names of outstanding faculty members whose achievements will be celebrated next month at VCU’s 42nd annual Faculty Convocation. I look forward to joining you to honor our friends and colleagues on the afternoon of Thursday, August 29. This year’s honorees include: University Award of […]

Dear Colleagues: I hope you are having an amazing summer! I write to update you on our efforts to implement the recommendations of the One VCU Academic Repositioning Task Force, specifically the recommendation entitled, “Creation of a new College for advancing Interdisciplinary, Experiential and Entrepreneurial Studies.” As always, thank you for all that you do […]

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 […]

Dear VCU Faculty: As you likely know, VCU’s Board of Visitors today, exercising their authority to determine university graduation mandates, signaled their support for the courses created to implement VCU’s Racial Literacy requirement but voted against mandating the requirement. Obviously, this is not the outcome for which we worked. As I told the Board, I […]

Thanks to the dedication and expertise of our faculty, VCU has the capacity to support a Racial Literacy requirement for incoming students as part of the General Education curriculum. I greatly appreciate and support our faculty’s work to develop these courses.  In March, the VCU Board of Visitors requested more information about the Racial Literacy […]

Message from the Provost Dear VCU faculty and staff: You are inspiring! I cannot count the number of deep and meaningful conversations I have enjoyed with you, and our colleagues, since I launched the One VCU Academic Repositioning Task Force in the spring of 2023. We’ve talked about broad societal changes that are reshaping our […]

During its meeting today, the VCU Board of Visitors asked for a presentation about the university’s racial literacy graduation requirement at a future meeting of the board’s Academic and Health Affairs Committee (AHAC). The board made clear that it was not discussing the content of any individual courses, only the requirement. We will continue to […]

Message from the Provost SACSCOC ReaccreditationThis week we host SACSCOC evaluators as part of the university’s ten-year reaccreditation process. This intense and multifaceted effort began a few years ago and I’m grateful to the many faculty and staff members who placed VCU in such a strong position to go through this examination. That’s especially true […]