The University of Arizona’s next senior vice president for academic affairs and provost is Patricia Prelock, the school said Tuesday.
“Dr. Prelock is a world-class academic leader and the ideal person to serve as our provost as we align the U of A around our strategic imperatives,” University of Arizona President Suresh Garimella said in a written statement.
Prelock is a former interim president of the University of Vermont, the school Garimella left to become president here. Prelock is set to begin her new role as the UA’s top academic official on May 19. The provost oversees the faculty and the university’s academic mission. She will be paid $550,000, the same as the previous provost.
Garimella’s decision comes a week after Prelock, one of four finalists for the post, was in Tucson to visit the campus and to hold a public forum in which she discussed topics, including the current political climate as the Trump administration targets universities with orders to eliminate diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs and cuts federal funding; strategies for the UA administration to share governance with faculty; enrollment management and pushing for excellence and innovation in teaching.
It is important for universities to not be reactionary in this challenging time, Prelock said at the forum. She said schools need “inclusive excellence” for all students, and to make sure the DEIA services, such as cultural and resource centers are open to all students, not just the diverse communities they were created to serve.
“My visit to the University of Arizona confirmed for me the extraordinary talent of the faculty, staff and students and their desire to increase academic success, their focus on research for the future, and their commitment to engagement with their community,” Prelock said in UA’s news release Tuesday. “I appreciated the rigor and integrity of the search process and the thoughtfulness of the search committee, as well as the opportunity to connect with administrators, students, faculty, staff and governance leaders across the campus.”
Prelock, who served as provost and senior vice president at UVM since 2019, has been at the school for 28 years.
Patricia Prelock, the former interim president of the University of Vermont, has been named the next senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of Arizona.
While the open forum sessions for the four candidates were public, the university denied access for the Arizona Daily Star to the attendees’ feedback on the forums. The feedback included approximately 200 responses as of last week, and was said to be the search committee’s “confidential final report to the president, out of respect for both the candidates and those who shared their input,” according to UA spokesperson Mitch Zak. Zak said he also would not give the Star access to the input after Garimella named Prelock.
UA Chair of the Faculty Leila Hudson said she supports the choice of Prelock enthusiastically, calling her “an experienced leader with an established working relationship with President Garimella.” “I and many in faculty governance were impressed with her calm, forthright, diplomatic style and look forward to working closely with her,” said Hudson.
In her open forum, Prelock, an expert in the nature and treatment of autism spectrum disorders, cited “experience across disciplines,” “tackling higher education challenges,” and “commitment to educate and innovate” as the reasons for her interest in the UA post. She holds a doctorate in speech-language pathology.
Carol Brochin, a UA College of Education faculty senator, said stability is essential in times of uncertainty and that it’s great to finally have new leadership in place, especially after years of upheaval in the UA’s provost position. “It’s reassuring to have a provost who comes from the faculty and who publicly affirms the importance of our institutions and core practices — like public service and shared governance,” said Brochin.
“In this political climate, we need courageous and principled leadership. I expect the new provost to meet this moment by boldly defending academic freedom, upholding the constitutional rights of all members of our campus community — including our queer and transgender students — and standing firm in support of our international students, who are facing the real and growing threat,” Brochin wrote to the Star Tuesday. “This is not a time for silence or neutrality. Our values as a public, land-grant research university demand visible, vocal leadership that protects the most vulnerable among us.”
The provost position has seen multiple leadership changes in recent years. Liesl Folks, who had been provost since 2019, stepped down in May 2023. She was succeeded in the role by Joseph Glover — but he left the UA after serving only about six weeks in the $550,000 job. Ron Marx has since been serving as interim provost.
Matthew Abraham, a UA professor of English, noted that three of the four finalists in the provost search — Prelock and Eric Barker and Jenna Rickus, both of Purdue University — have very close connections to Garimella and hail from institutions he previously worked at. “Even if these three candidates were miraculously the most qualified in the entire pool of applicants, the optics are problematic,” Abraham said.
The fourth finalist was William Bernhard of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
A president for the American Speech-Language Hearing Association and a National Academies of Practice fellow in speech-language pathology, Prelock was described as an “an unwavering champion of student success, developing and promoting academic success goals to track progress across a wide variety of areas” by Vermont Business Magazine.
