Dear UNT Faculty and Staff,

I am pleased to introduce Dr. Holly M. Hutchins as UNT's new vice provost for faculty success. A proud UNT alumna, Dr. Hutchins has dedicated her career to developing and mentoring diverse faculty through collaborative leadership and a strategic commitment to institutional equity. Her appointment begins July 12.

Dr. Hutchins is returning to our Mean Green Family after 17 years at the University of Houston (a Carnegie-ranked Tier One and Minority-Serving Institution), where she served as professor and chair of the Department of Human Development and Consumer Sciences in the College of Technology. 

As department chair, her forward-thinking leadership resulted in an increase in tenure-track faculty size and diversity; an equitable pay increase for adjunct faculty; the development of new faculty research labs; an increase in publications, grant proposals and collaborations; and improvements to technology access and e-learning classroom spaces. She also organized a series of faculty forums featuring experts on student engagement and social justice in virtual learning.

From 2014 to 2020, Dr. Hutchins served as lead co-principal investigator for the Center for ADVANCING UH Faculty Success, a National Science Foundation-funded initiative designed to support women faculty in traditional STEM and social/behavioral science (SBS) fields. In this role, she worked closely with leaders throughout the UH System to increase the recruitment of Black and Latinx tenure-track women faculty university-wide; increase the number of STEM and SBS women faculty in administrative leadership positions; and design policies, trainings and workshops that improved the faculty climate toward inclusivity and equity.

As UNT's vice provost for faculty success, Dr. Hutchins will oversee the numerous programs and initiatives that support our faculty in their teaching, scholarly and leadership endeavors. I am confident that with her experience and insight — not to mention her UNT degrees — she will help us continue to expand our faculty development portfolio and strengthen our reputation as one of the best places to work.

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Hutchins back to UNT.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Cowley

Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs