Office of the Provost

Across the Richmond region, VCU partners with local organizations, neighborhood leaders and dedicated residents to support community goals. Through the local voices closest to this work, VCU explores how an urban campus can deliver real-world impact in the communities that surround it. Longtime community organizer Jim Vigeant founded The Ealey Project after unexpectedly discovering a […]

Garret Westlake, Ph.D., vice provost for innovation and strategic design at VCU, will join the inaugural Google HE Faculty AI Fellowship for North America.  Westlake, a professor of management and entrepreneurship, is motivated by business and design approaches that help individuals better understand how to use AI critically, creatively and ethically,  without losing the human […]

Hernan Bucheli has been appointed interim leader of VCU’s Global Education Office, effective June 19. In addition to the interim role, Bucheli will continue to serve as vice president for Strategic Enrollment Management and Student Success. He aims to strengthen global partnerships and support VCU’s long‑term internationalization goals.

VCUarts Communication Arts students premiered large‑scale animated digital murals at CoStar’s new headquarters, showcasing Richmond‑inspired motion art. The project provided real‑world creative production experience, highlighted collaboration with industry mentors, and demonstrated students’ technical skill, artistic range, and ability to design immersive public visual environments.

VCU researcher Baobao Song advances corporate social responsibility through public‑relations scholarship, driven by personal experience with harmful products. She publishes widely, earns national recognition, and explores how fandoms, including BTS fans, mobilize around advocacy causes, while encouraging curiosity-driven learning in students.

In this issue: VCU expands credit‑bearing internships, highlights major research events, announces Arturo Saavedra as provost, celebrates faculty achievements, and promotes upcoming academic programs, conferences, and resources supporting student success and interdisciplinary collaboration.

VCU launched an interdisciplinary effort uniting health professions, medicine, nursing, and pharmacy to pursue a major neurodegeneration center grant. The team set summer research plans and a fall reconvening, advancing VCU Convergence’s mission to tackle complex brain‑health challenges collaboratively.

VCU’s inaugural Neuroscience Design Jam united clinicians, students, and innovators to turn surgical challenges into early medical‑device concepts, advancing VCU’s Convergence initiative by fostering interdisciplinary problem‑solving, rapid prototyping, and pathways to commercialization through TechTransfer and ongoing Vertically Integrated Project development.

At TEDxVCU’s Illuminate event on Saturday, April 11, Sterling Hundley, BFA, MFA, professor of communication arts took the stage to reflect on an unexpected intersection of art and medicine. As a co-principal investigator of the Applied Arts Lab Vertically Integrated Project at VCU, Hundley shared stories from his time documenting surgeries and complex clinical moments […]

This story was originally reported and written by Grant Heston with VCU News. Arturo Saavedra, M.D., Ph.D., has been appointed executive vice president and provost at Virginia Commonwealth University after serving in the role on an interim basis since December 2025. The Board of Visitors will officially consider the appointment at its meeting later this […]