Robert C. Holub, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, has been selected to become the next chancellor of the University of Massachusetts’ flagship campus at Amherst.
UMass’s president, Jack M. Wilson, selected Mr. Holub from among four finalists, the university announced today. The system’s Board of Trustees will consider the recommendation at a special meeting on Monday. Mr. Holub would replace John V. Lombardi, who left Amherst last summer amid controversial plans to shake up the top management of the five-campus Massachusetts system. Mr. Lombardi is now president of the Louisiana State University system.
Mr. Holub, who came to Tennessee in 2006, had previously served in several positions at the University of California at Berkeley, including dean of the undergraduate division of the College of Letters and Science.
He told the Associated Press he was “very honored” by the Massachusetts appointment and was keeping an open mind about the past year’s tensions between the Amherst campus and the system administration in Boston. “It’s really hard for me to judge the situation from so far away, and I am going to see what the lay of the land is first and find out everybody’s feelings,” he said. “But I do know that you don’t move a university forward by yourself. You have to have everyone on board.” —Charles Huckabee