UVM picks UC Merced’s Betsy Dumont as its next provost
The University Green in Burlington. Photo: HeyTomek, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The University of Vermont has picked a biologist who has spent three decades studying how bats, birds and other animals evolved their skulls and jaws to be its next chief academic officer.
Elizabeth “Betsy” Dumont, currently executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California, Merced, was named UVM’s next provost and senior vice president on Nov. 2, the university announced. The appointment still needs approval from the Board of Trustees’ executive committee, which is scheduled to take it up on Nov. 16. If approved, she starts on campus Jan. 4.
She will replace Linda Schadler, who has been interim provost since October 2024 and is retiring after 34 years in higher education.
From UMass to the Central Valley
Dumont’s career has run through public universities. She spent 16 years at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, starting as an assistant professor of biology and working up to senior vice provost for academic affairs. She then went to UC Merced, the newest campus in the University of California system, where she was dean of the School of Natural Sciences for seven years and a professor of life and environmental sciences before becoming provost. UC Merced opened in 2005 as the 10th UC campus, and much of its growth since then has been about building research programs and faculty ranks from close to scratch in the San Joaquin Valley, experience that is different from running academics at a university founded in 1791. Earlier in her career she taught at Northeast Ohio Medical University and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Her research is in evolutionary vertebrate morphology, which looks at how body structures change across species over time and why. Brent Lockwood, who chairs UVM’s biology department, said in the announcement that her work has spanned more than 30 years and more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, covering bats, birds, primates, marsupials and even sharks. She will hold an appointment in the biology department.
That research background matters to faculty at a place like UVM, which is both Vermont’s flagship public university and a research institution with a medical school. Provosts at research universities usually oversee the deans, faculty hiring and promotion, the academic budget and the course catalog. In practice, a lot of the hardest decisions on campus run through that office.
What UVM said about the pick
President Marlene Tromp described Dumont’s style as “grounded in careful listening and trust building” and tied the hire to the university’s strategic plan, which UVM calls Green, Gold, and Bold.
The national search was co-chaired by Faculty Senate President Abby McGowan and Alicia Estey, UVM’s senior vice president for finance and administration. McGowan said Dumont “stood out” in a strong pool and pointed to her experience “navigating institutional change.” Estey cited her readiness for “a rapidly changing higher education landscape.”
Dumont said she was drawn by UVM’s mix of research and its commitment to students and to Vermont communities, and that she plans to work with faculty, staff and students “to build on UVM’s strengths.”
The job she’s walking into
The phrase “institutional change” is doing some work in those statements. Public universities across New England are dealing with a shrinking pool of high school graduates, uncertainty over federal research funding and pressure on tuition. UVM has leaned on out-of-state enrollment for years, and Vermont’s state appropriation per student is among the lowest in the country. A provost’s office is where those pressures turn into decisions about which programs grow and which don’t.
She also arrives after more than two years of interim leadership in the role. Schadler took the job on an interim basis in fall 2024, and a permanent provost gives Tromp’s administration a full senior team heading into the next budget cycle.
The trustees’ executive committee meets Nov. 16. Barring a surprise, Burlington gets a new provost in January.
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