Glover Selected as Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

April 26, 2024
Robert C. Robbins

April 26, 2024, 9:00 a.m. 

Dear Students and Colleagues,

After a thorough national search that included very strong candidates, I am pleased to announce that I have appointed Joseph Glover as the University of Arizona’s next Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, pending approval by the Arizona Board of Regents. Dr. Glover’s experience and priorities as a leader reflect our University values, and his track record of academic excellence, faculty support, and collaborative leadership will benefit our students, faculty, staff and community. He will begin his service on July 1.

I want to thank the search advisory committee and its co-chairs, A-P Durand and Joellen Russell, for their tremendous work to identify exceptional candidates and to advance those most qualified. Additionally, I extend my sincere appreciation to Ron Marx for his excellent service over the past year as Interim SVP and Provost. 

Below are details on Dr. Glover’s career and impact.   

Achievements at UF 

Dr. Glover has spent the majority of his career at the University of Florida, a highly-ranked, public, land-grant research university with a mission very similar to our own. He currently holds the position of Senior Advisor to the President, previously serving as that institution’s Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs for three different presidents, from 2008 to 2023, and serving in several academic leadership roles for the Department of Mathematics and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  His many achievements as Florida’s Provost include: 

  • Contributing to a significant improvement in the institution’s national ranking among public universities
  • Contributing to UF’s research success and its expansion to over $1 billion in annual expenditures, including through moonshot efforts in cross-disciplinary areas of high societal need 
  • Leading UF’s move to the forefront of U.S. universities embracing Artificial Intelligence by initiating a university-wide curriculum initiative and branding campaign 
  • Leading initiatives that hired more than 600 faculty members in new positions, including 100 focused on AI and its applications
  • Advancing diversity in STEM fields as Principal Investigator on a major NSF grant focused on Ph.D. STEM education and another as part of the NSF-APLU Aspire Alliance
  • Prioritizing student access and success through a new admissions track; creation of a summer term program for the fine and performing arts; and conceptualizing and developing UF’s Innovation Academy, a spring-summer schedule program that fosters entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity
  • Implementing a new university-wide budget model

Faculty Career in Mathematics 

Prior to serving in senior administrative roles, Dr. Glover enjoyed a remarkable teaching career at UF as a professor of mathematics and as the Chair of the Department of Mathematics from 1993 to 1998. As a faculty member and administrator, Dr. Glover earned accolades for teaching, mentorship, and service from the University of Florida and other institutions, and held visiting appointments at the Université de Grenoble (1980–81) and Université de Paris (1989). 

Dr. Glover earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California, San Diego, with expertise in probability theory and stochastic processes. He has held funding as Principal Investigator on a series of grants from the National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the National Security Agency, and he has been involved with national leadership of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. 

Dr. Glover is uniquely qualified to advance the University of Arizona’s mission while addressing the challenges we face as an institution. His experience and knowledge will be instrumental in shaping our collective future as a university.

Please join me in giving Dr. Joseph Glover a warm welcome to the University of Arizona family. I look forward to his leadership and impact.

Sincerely, 

Robert C. Robbins, M.D. 

President

The University of Arizona 

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