The Arizona Board of Regents voted to hire Suresh Garimella as the next University of Arizona president on Friday morning and introduced him at a campus news conference in the afternoon.
Garimella said he felt ready for the challenges to come.
“I certainly understand the responsibility, the awesome responsibility, of leading a land grant university, and to me, primary thinking is that we have to provide access to a world-class education for students,” he said.
Garimella answered questions from reporters following brief speeches by board and presidential search committee members. One reporter asked him about the financial problems at the university.
“I really believe in the financial turnaround that the university has been working on along with the board of regents and folks that are the staff and leadership on campus. I’m very optimistic about that,” he said.
An Arizona Luminaria reporter asked him about the toughest question he received during the interview process. Garimella said he was ready for the questions he received and none of them were unexpected.
“None of it was surprising to me,” he said. He chuckled then exclaimed he must have done a good job with his answers.
During a virtual special board meeting Friday morning, board members interviewed Garimella behind closed doors and then voted in public to begin contract negotiations with him.
Garimella, a mechanical engineer, has been president of the University of Vermont since 2019 and previously worked as an executive vice president at Purdue University.
Friday’s interview was the result of a national search to replace president Robert Robbins, who announced his planned resignation in April after repeated calls for him to step down in the midst of the school’s financial crisis.
Robbins said in his resignation announcement that he’d leave the role upon the hiring of a new president or at the end of his current contract, which ends on June 30, 2026.
Garimella will be the 23rd president of the UA.
Garimella’s base salary at UVM was $509,331, according to VTDigger, and Robbins’ salary at the UA is $734,407 plus bonuses annually after taking a 10% pay cut in March.
Regent Fred DuVal said Garimella was the unanimous recommendation of the UA Presidential Search Committee, an 18-member group of regents and campus community members, that has worked together since April to create a profile for the position and established criteria for potential candidates.
The group engaged with the community and stakeholders to inform their decisions, including a campus-wide survey with more than 4,000 respondents, listening tours and three public town halls during the last school year.
Nicholas Opich, the associate vice president of marketing and communications for the board of regents, didn’t disclose the number of candidates screened for the position.
However he referred to the presidential search guidelines that state: “After the conclusion of the search, the board will disclose to the public aggregated, non-personally identifiable information regarding persons whose qualifications were considered by the advisory committee and the board, which may include the following: gender; age; race, ethnicity; types of positions held in academia or elsewhere; educational background; and geographic diversity. The board will also disclose costs associated with the search process and the sources of funding.”
At the Friday meeting DuVal said the committee’s goals were to find a great president, start a healing process, and demonstrate shared governance and collaborative decision making.
“It was very intentional — and really unprecedented — that a third of the committee was made up of faculty members, representing every faculty governance group. It was important, and it is important, that the faculty needed an outsized voice in this process,” DuVal said. “They got it.”
Leila Hudson, the UA Faculty Senate chair and associate professor of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, said that faculty governance found out about Garimella yesterday but she was able to meet with the candidate over the phone and they “had a promising conversation in spite of the short notice.”
Ted Downing, a UA faculty senate member and professor of social development, said he has been at the university through 10 presidents and the process has changed.
“In the earlier [presidential searches], we actually had three candidates that came in,” he recalled.
He said potential candidates also had to visit the campus, interview with faculty and hold public meetings. Now they have minimal involvement.
Meet Garimella
Garimella “has led with a bold vision and thoughtful financial discipline, more than doubled the university’s research enterprise, and strengthened state and community relationships,” according to a news release by the board of regents.
Regent Jessica Pacheco said Garimella is engaging and a good listener.
“He’s celebrated in higher education for his innovative leadership and exceptional record of putting students first, which is exactly where we need to be,” Pacheco said at the meeting.
He also has faced criticism for cuts to programs and faculty positions at the school and the administration’s treatment of sexual misconduct cases that led to widespread student protests.
As the meeting was adjourning, Garimella, who had been on video but silent during the public portion said: “Muchísimas gracias a todos. Thank you. Go Cats!”
Hear more comments from the regents in the video replay of Friday’s vote:
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