It’s official.
Michael A. Driscoll, who currently serves as provost and executive vice chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA), was selected January 19, 2012, by the Pennsylvania State System Board of Governors to serve as the next president of IUP.
Dr. Driscoll will begin his work at IUP on July 1.
We had a chance to meet Dr. Driscoll in November. If you’re keeping track of candidates by the order in which they visited, he was the second (a.k.a. “the guy from Alaska”).
He has an outstanding record of success in all areas, including the creation of the strategic plan at UAA and creation of the university’s College of Health. He was part of a team that helped to secure UAA’s largest corporate gift, $15 million from ConocoPhillips to name the university’s new integrated science building and establish an arctic science and engineering endowment.
Before his work at UAA, he was at Portland State University for 18 years, last serving as vice provost for academic personnel and budget. He has had numerous works published in academic journals including the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing and the International Journal on Computers and Electronics in Agriculture.
UAA seems to have many similaries to IUP. It’s a bit bigger, with about 16,000 students on its main campus and 5,000 more at community campuses in several other areas. Like IUP, it is part of a university system.
His background is in electrical engineering. He earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in that field from Michigan State University, but he’s also kind of a renaissance man.
In his biography, he admits to an interest in naval history and “an addiction to crossword puzzles.” He also says he enjoys music and theater (he is REALLY in the right place, with IUP’s outstanding music and theater productions) and nice dinners in quiet restaurants (again, many from which to choose in Indiana County).
Congratulations to Dr. Driscoll. We truly look forward to having him join us as our new president. Thanks and congratulations are also in order for the IUP Presidential Search Committee and its chair, trustee Susan Delaney. There have been many hours spent in this process, and it wasn’t an easy task.
We will continue to have more on the presidential transition on the IUP website and in IUP Daily, the employee e-mail newsletter, as more information becomes available. Keep watching. He’s also been in the news already–check out the following coverage:
And, keep watching local eateries come July. Chances are you might see IUP’s new president and his wife, Becky, enjoying one of Indiana County’s great restaurants.