College of Arizona picks new president

Suresh Garimella, present president of the College of Vermont, would be the College of Arizona’s new president. He was the one finalist to emerge from a months-long search course of to interchange UA President Robert Robbins, who introduced his resignation earlier this yr amid the college’s ongoing monetary disaster.

The Arizona Board of Regents Friday voted unanimously to approve Garimella’s appointment, which is able to doubtless start “later this fall,” in line with a information launch from the board. 

Garimella is “student-focused and considers himself in the beginning a college member. With a 35-year profession in increased schooling, Suresh is participating, an incredible listener and a collaborative chief,” mentioned Cecilia Mata, board chair. “Wildcats are a part of our state’s DNA, and [Garimella] has proven he’s the precise chief on the proper time to heal and develop Arizona’s land-grant college.”

It’s not but clear what how a lot Garimella will earn as UA’s subsequent president (he reportedly made $509,331 at Vermont). Robbins’s base wage is $734,407, after he took a ten p.c pay lower in March, in line with UA.

Whereas Garimella nonetheless has to barter his exit from the Vermont and his new contract with UA, as soon as he arrives in Tucson, he’ll change Robbins, who has served as president of UA since 2017. Robbins, a former hospital CEO and cardiothoracic surgeon, mentioned final spring he would step down, and that he wouldn’t renew his contract in 2026 or he would go away after an 18-member search committee chosen a brand new president, whichever got here first. 

Though Robbins’s tenure was marked by some successes—he grew UA’s analysis expenditures to just about $955 million and bought its endowment over the $1 billion threshold—he additionally made a collection of controversial management choices. 

The College of Arizona’s buy and rebrand of a troubled, once-for-profit college into the College of Arizona International Campus fueled nationwide scrutiny, as did the college’s reported dealing with of occasions surrounding the deadly on-campus capturing of a professor in 2022. Because of the latter, the UA College Senate, which repeatedly brushed up in opposition to Robbins’s management decisions, handed a vote of no confidence in Robbins and different prime UA officers in 2023. 

Final fall, it was additionally revealed that the college’s monetary mismanagement resulted in a $177 million price range deficit, although U=A predicts it will likely be lowered to $53 million by subsequent yr, in line with The Arizona Every day Star. 

Robbins mentioned in a press release that he’d help Garimella “with the transition in any approach potential,” and that “the U of A will likely be in good fingers for years to come back.”  Garimella, who’s a mechanical engineer by commerce, has served as president of the College of Vermont since 2019. Earlier than that, he was govt vp for analysis and partnerships at Purdue College, the place he was founding director of the Nationwide Science Basis’s Cooling Applied sciences Analysis Heart. 

Joellen Russell, College Distinguished Professor of biogeochemical dynamics and Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair of Integrative Science at UA, who served on the presidential search committee, instructed The Every day Star that Garimella emerged as one of the best candidate, and that the committee unanimously really helpful him. 

“How will you beat a sitting president at one other land-grant college who can be within the Nationwide Academy,” Russell reportedly mentioned. “ I’m thrilled that the board listened to our suggestions and did such an incredible job of touchdown a improbable president.”

Garimella’s management of Vermont has not been with out controversy, nonetheless, as he confronted criticism from college students and school after reducing quite a few liberal arts majors and minors in 2020. 

His tenure additionally included freezing tuition for in-state college students, increasing entry to a need-based scholarship and rising the college’s analysis price range. He plans to use his curiosity in analysis at UA, which has a a lot bigger analysis portfolio than Vermont. 

“I’ve lengthy admired the U of A and its stature within the state of Arizona and much past,” he mentioned within the college’s announcement. “The establishment demonstrates one of the best qualities of a land-grant college with distinctive management in analysis and well being sciences, extremely acclaimed school and employees and a various scholar inhabitants comprised of one of the best and brightest from around the globe.”