Radford University has announced that Bret Danilowicz, the provost and vice president for academic affairs at Florida Atlantic University, will be the school’s new president.
He succeeds Brian Hemphill, who left to become the president of Old Dominion University.
Danilowicz has served since 2018 as the provost and vice president for academic affairs at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. In this role, he was the chief academic and administrative officer, supervising 10 academic colleges with a budget of $330 million, according to a release from Radford. While there, Florida Atlantic achieved its first-ever ranking in the list of National Public Research Universities. A release from Radford says that while at Florida Atlantic, “Danilowicz launched a diversity, equity and inclusion committee charged with identifying policies and practices which should be changed to improve diversity and inclusion efforts. As a result, one of the major changes enacted was the addition of diversity and inclusion learning outcomes for all degrees.”
Prior to joining Florida Atlantic University, Danilowicz served as dean of the college of arts and sciences at Oklahoma State University beginning in 2012.
Danilowicz earned a doctor of philosophy degree in zoology from Duke University, a master of business administration from Georgia Southern University, master of arts in education from The Open University, U.K., and his bachelor of science in biology with a computer science minor from Utica College of Syracuse University. Additionally, Danilowicz held two postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Windsor, Canada.
Danilowicz will assume the president’s role on July 1, 2022.
In a statement, Robert Archer, rector of the Board of Visitors, said of Danilowicz: “He is a proven leader and possesses the background and experience required to take us to the next level and into the future. He clearly demonstrated to both the Search Committee and the Board of Visitors his energy and commitment to higher education, as well as his life-long goal of becoming a president of a major university such as Radford.”