Announcing an Interim Provost for UMBC

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 12:00:18 -0400
president

Dear UMBC Community,

I am pleased to announce that David Dauwalder has accepted my invitation to serve as interim provost at UMBC beginning August 15. David was selected from a highly qualified pool of interim candidates from The Registry, a firm specializing in placing interim higher education leaders.

As I shared earlier this summer, the national search for our next provost and senior vice president for academic affairs is ongoing. Retaining an interim provost will allow us to continue to advance our strategic interests -- including moving forward with strategic planning -- as we recruit and select the next provost this year. My expectation is that the new provost will join us by next summer.

In the meantime, we are fortunate to be gaining in David a deeply experienced, wise, and strategic academic administrator. Throughout his career, he has served as provost at several institutions, both public and private, including Central Connecticut State University; Woodbury University; University of New Haven; California State University, Stanislaus; and Central Washington University.

After earning his bachelor's and doctoral degrees in education from Northern Arizona University and Arizona State University, respectively, David began his academic career as an assistant professor at Central Michigan University, and he served on the faculties at several universities before moving into academic administration while on the faculty at California State University, Los Angeles. In addition to his provost roles, he has served as dean of the School of Business and Economics at Central Washington, interim dean of the Eberhardt School of Business at the University of the Pacific, and interim president at Woodbury University.

Along the way, he has led numerous accreditation processes and strategic planning processes, advanced student success initiatives, improved transparency and accountability of budget planning and tracking, increased support for research and creative activity, and in myriad ways advocated on behalf of faculty and embraced and advanced effective shared governance.

David is excited to join our community and partner in advancing our distinctive academic mission and vision as a model of inclusive excellence. He is not a candidate for the permanent role; his service is intended to ensure continuity of leadership in all areas of academic administration during this period. Following a visit to campus recently during which David met with numerous members of shared governance and me, I am even more confident that he will integrate into our community and get up to speed quickly. I am gratified that UMBC has attracted such an outstanding academic administrator to provide interim leadership. Please join me in congratulating and welcoming David to UMBC. We will host opportunities for the UMBC community to meet David around the beginning of the semester, starting with Fall Opening Meeting on August 24. Other opportunities will be announced shortly.

Finally, I want to take this opportunity as well to express my deepest appreciation once more to Philip Rous, who served so admirably as our provost and senior vice president for academic affairs and who has provided invaluable support to me and been a generous and gracious colleague to us all.

Sincerely,

President Valerie Sheares Ashby