With little more than a month left until President Ann Weaver Hart assumes the presidency at the University of Arizona, the Board of Trustees announced yesterday that Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Richard Englert would be appointed acting president of the university.
The board voted unanimously to appoint Englert to his new role which he will assume on July 1, said Ray Betzner, assistant vice president of university communications. The appointment will be formally ratified by the Board of Trustees on June 21.
“Dr. Englert will serve as Acting President of Temple University until the Presidential Search Committee completes its work and recommends to the Board of Trustees an individual to become the next president of the University,” Patrick J. O’Connor, chairman of the Board of Trustees and the Presidential Search Committee, said in an email.
O’Connor did not give a timetable for the selection of a new president in the email.
Englert, whose contract was recently extended until the end of the year after spending the last two years as provost, said he was honored by the new role.
“I’m really honored and humbled by this new role that the board is offering me,” Englert, who has been at Temple for 36 years, said. “I love Temple University, I love our students, our faculty and any way I can serve the university, I’m happy to do so. I’m excited by this.”
When Englert takes office as acting president on July 1, he said he will name an interim provost, but did not give an indication of who would take that post.
“Come July 1, I would name an interim provost to serve along with me while I’m acting president,” he said. “It’s way too early to speculate or say [who it will be].”
Englert said that after a new president is selected and takes office, he plans to return to being a full-time faculty member in the College of Education.
“My plan and my aspiration is to return to faculty status and to be a full-time faculty member after a new president takes office,” he said. “I’m a teacher at heart, my passion is for teaching and there is nothing more exciting to me than to teach full-time. So, that would be my plan and that would obviously occur when a new president takes office.”
Hart will serve her last day at Temple on June 30, before becoming the president of the University of Arizona on July 1.
Sean Carlin can be reached at sean.carlin@temple.edu.
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