Final candidate in provost search to speak at open forum Monday
John Wiencek, the final candidate in the search for a new provost and executive vice president, will be on campus Monday for an open forum and a series of stakeholder meetings.
The forum will take place at 3:30 p.m. Monday in the Vandal Ballroom in the Bruce Pitman Center, formerly the Student Union Building.
John Wiencek
Wiencek is the interim provost and vice president of academic affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. On top of his interim position, Wiencek serves as senior vice-provost and as a professor in the department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering at VCA — a position he has held since 2013.
VCU is located in Richland, Virginia, and is one of the larger institutions in the state with more than 31,000 students enrolled as of 2014.
As interim provost, Wiencek is responsible for academic programming, faculty promotion, accreditation and budget planning and management.
In his vice-provost role, Wiencek served as a senior adviser to the provost on all academic matters and assisted in managing a budget of $240 million. He also oversaw the university’s summer session office and worked with the provost to provide oversight to eight vice provosts, eight deans and five directors of academic support units.
Before VCA, Wiencek served as college dean of the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at The University of South Florida.
Wiencek also spent 12 years at The University of Iowa, starting out as an associate professor and moving up to become graduate director and department chair.
He began his academic career at Rutgers University in 1989 as an assistant professor.
If chosen, Wiencek would replace Interim Provost and Executive Vice President Katherine Aiken, who assumed the position after former Provost Doug Baker left UI to become president at Northern Illinois University.
Ryan Tarinelli can be reached at [email protected]