LSU Executive Vice President and Provost Stuart Bell, who is the top pick for president of the University of Alabama, will be missed by the school’s administration and faculty, Jane Cassidy, vice provost for Human Resources, tells Daily Report this morning.
As Daily Report previously reported, Bell will be recommended for the post at a meeting of the University of Alabama System’s Board of Trustees on June 18. Pending its approval, he will become the university’s 29th president on July 15. He could not be reached for comment this morning.
“We are really thrilled for Stuart to get this opportunity,” Cassidy says. “He is a tremendous leader, but we are sad to see him leave LSU.”
Cassidy, whose office at the university is next door to Bell’s, says Bell was not actively seeking a position elsewhere when he was contacted by Alabama, but the new position suits him in a number of ways.
Bell, a Texas native, served in the school’s Department of Mechanical Engineering for 16 years before becoming Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Kansas and then executive vice provost at LSU in 2012.
“People get targeted for good jobs. He was contacted and Alabama is a place that he’s familiar with. It’s a large school, he’s from the South, and it’s in the SEC,” Cassidy says. “It’s unfortunate for us, but I couldn’t be happier for him.”
Bob Mann, political historian and Manship Chair at the Manship School of Mass Communication at LSU, says Bell’s exit shouldn’t be viewed as any sort of decline of LSU in comparison to other schools. Many faculty are open to the opportunity for a higher position of leadership, he notes.
“Someone like Stuart Bell was always going to have his eye out for opportunities like this,” Mann tells Daily Report. “I would hesitate to read it as a bad thing. We lost two Manship faculty this year to become deans of other schools. I think that speaks highly of our faculty.”
Just last month, David Kurpius, LSU associate vice chancellor of enrollment management and professor of mass communication, was named dean of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. —Deanna Narveson
