I am pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Jerold “Jerry” L. Hale as the next Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, effective June 1, 2019.
Jerry Hale is an experienced educator, administrator and exceptionally well-qualified to serve as UTC’s chief academic officer, with over 35 years of experience as a faculty member and in positions of leadership in higher education. His background and experience are a perfect fit for what UTC needs to move forward.
He comes to UTC from the College of Charleston, where he has served since 2013 as dean of the campus’ largest academic unit, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
In addition to providing leadership for traditional programs in the liberal arts and humanities at the College of Charleston, Dr. Hale oversaw interdisciplinary programs in environmental studies, child life, public administration, urban studies, and women’s and gender studies.
While there, Dr. Hale led initiatives to build diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as initiatives to increase retention and graduation rates. He also oversaw diversity, equity and inclusion training for his department chairs and their assistants that was adopted across the campus. The same campus-wide implementation resulted in training for his department heads and search committee chairs in strategies to diversify applicant pools and avoid bias in evaluating credentials.
Dr. Hale served as dean of the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, where he was from 2010 to 2013. While overseeing that university’s largest academic unit, Dr. Hale led initiatives to increase retention and graduation rates and to enhance diversity, equity and inclusion.
From 1991 to 2010 he was a faculty member in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia and was department head from 2000 to 2008. He also served as director of graduate studies, chair of the Department of Social Sciences and director of basic courses.
Dr. Hale was an assistant professor of speech at the University of Hawaii-Manoa from 1983 to 1984. From there, he moved to Miami University and served as assistant/associate professor of communications from 1984 to 1991.
Dr. Hale earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and master’s and doctoral degrees in communication from Michigan State University.
A native of Santa Maria, California, he and his wife, Janet, have three adult children, Andrew, William and Theresa.
I want to thank the members of the Provost Search Committee for their hard work. I also want to extend a campus-wide thank you to Dr. George Hynd for his service as Interim Provost.