Ohio State Provost Selected as Next Chancellor at UA

Joseph E. Steinmetz has been selected as the sixth chancellor of the University of Arkansas pending a formal vote by the Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas System.

Steinmetz, currently the executive vice president and provost at Ohio State University, will be formally introduced as chancellor at a public press conference at the UA campus in Fayetteville at 3 p.m. on Oct. 30. He is expected to begin Jan. 1, 2016.

Steinmetz has been the executive vice president and provost at Ohio State since 2013. He came to Ohio State in 2009 when he was appointed vice provost for arts and sciences and the first executive dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Prior to Ohio State, Steinmetz was dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas and was also a university distinguished professor. He served for 19 years at Indiana University, where he was executive associate dean for the College of Arts and Sciences and chair of the Department of Psychology. At Indiana he was also a distinguished professor of psychological and brain sciences.

The announcement ends an eight-month process to name a successor for G. David Gearhart, who retired earlier this year.

Dan Ferritor, chancellor from 1986-1997, has served as interim chancellor since Gearhart’s retirement on July 31, and will continue to do so until Steinmetz begins.