The first of four in-person candidates seeking to fill the vacant provost post at the University of Arizona comes from Purdue University.
Eric Landon Barker is currently the vice president for health affairs and pharmacy dean at Purdue, where he has been since 1998.
Over the years, Barker has held numerous positions including assistant and associate professor, assistant dean for graduate programs, associate dean for research and associate provost for graduate programs.
Barker was on campus Monday. A public forum with Barker is set for 9 a.m. Tuesday.
Barker, a professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology, was promoted to vice president of health affairs, while in his acting provost role in May 2024, a position he has held since July 1, 2024.
In the vice president role, Barker’s responsibilities included aligning health and life science undergraduate, graduate and professional programs and helping push health research to drive innovation and entrepreneurship.
Barker’s long tenure at Purdue University forms a connection with UA President Suresh Garimella, who was a professor and vice president at Purdue before serving as president at the University of Vermont prior to coming to UA in October.
Barker isn’t the first candidate who has come in from Garimella’s past universities.
Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, the UA’s senior vice president for research and innovation, worked at Purdue from 2015 to 2019 in various roles. Similarly, Richard Cate, UVM’s vice president for finance and administration, was appointed by Garimella in January as the UA’s new special advisor on finances and budgets.
Barker, a neuropharmacologist, studied pharmacy at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, received a PhD in pharmacology from Vanderbilt University and completed postdoctoral research at Vanderbilt and Emory University. As a researcher, Barker’s interests are in the areas of molecular actions of drugs of abuse and other drugs which affect the brain.
He’s also a member of numerous professional associations including the American Pharmacists Association, Society for Neuroscience, and American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.
As associate provost for graduate programs at Purdue, Barker’s responsibilities included overseeing 240 programs and 14,000 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at the graduate school, and leading the “Graduate School Transformation Project,” which streamlined many processes and identified new ways to facilitate graduate and professional student success and remove barriers to new and innovative graduate and professional programs.
The UA’s provost position has had its share of upheaval in the last two years.
The position, currently held by Ron Marx in the interim, was previously held by Joseph Glover, who left six weeks after starting the job in July 2024 to return to the University of Florida.
Glover came into the role after Robbins announced former Provost Liesl Folks, who was in the position since 2019, would be stepping down in May 2023 in lieu of many blaming her for the UA’s security lapses that preceded the fatal on-campus shooting of Professor Thomas Meixner by a former graduate student.
