Preceded by Jimmy Cheek Succeeded by Neville G. Pinto | Preceded by Santa J. Ono Preceded by Gregory H. Williams | |
Residence Knoxville, Tennessee, US Alma mater Western Kentucky University (BA, MA)
University of Michigan (PhD) | ||
Beverly J. Davenport is the 8th and current Chancellor of The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She was nominated to be Chancellor in November 2016 by Joe DiPietro, President of the UT System. Her nomination was the result of a search committee put in place after Jimmy Cheek announced his retirement from the Office of Chancellor. She was appointed the interim president of the University of Cincinnati on July 15, 2016. Previously she served three years as UC’s Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost. This unanimous appointment by the university’s Board of Trustees makes Davenport the 29th president of the University of Cincinnati. She is an acclaimed scholar, award-winning teacher and experienced administrator.
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Executive leadership
Davenport has served as the leader of two R1 universities: The University of Tennessee, Knoxville and the University of Cincinnati.
Chancellor of The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Davenport began serving at the Chancellor of The University of Tennessee, Knoxville on February 15, 2017 after serving as the Interim President of the University of Cincinnati for less than one year. She is the first woman to lead the Knoxville campus. During a press conference on her first day at UTK, she said making campus safe for all students was a priority. She will also help in finishing the search for the university's next athletic director. Further, she is aware of and working on the issues surrounding the funding of the university's Office of Diversity, including the Pride Center.
Interim President of the University of Cincinnati
In her role as UC’s president, Davenport oversees one of the USA’s top 30 public research universities with $400 million in annual research funding, a $1.2 billion budget and a $1.2 billion endowment. The Research 1 university is home to 14 colleges including medicine, law, pharmacy, engineering, business, a world renowned school of design and music conservatory in addition to two regional campuses, arts and sciences, education, nursing and allied health. With nearly 45,000 students from over 100 countries and all 50 states, the University boasts 300,000 living alumni, over 5,000 faculty members and 12,000 staff and student workers. Founded in 1819, UC will soon celebrate its bicentennial, and as a state university, it is part of the Ohio Department of Higher Education.
Academic career
Prior to her appointment as UC’s interim president, Davenport served as UC’s Provost and chief academic officer from 2013 to 2016. During her tenure as provost, she led enrollment management efforts that resulted in record-setting enrollments, significant advances in retention and graduation rates, and recent rises in U.S. News & World Report rankings. She launched aggressive faculty recruitment initiatives including a $60 million Cluster Hiring Initiative, a Strategic Hiring Opportunity Program and a Dual Career Assistance Program that has significantly increased the number of women and underrepresented minority faculty hired. The number of female faculty hired has nearly doubled since she came to the university.
In supporting student success, Davenport also increased UC’s international engagement with faculty and student partnerships while doubling the number of students who study abroad. She has invested in mental health counseling, academic support services, minority scholarships, on-line learning and access and opportunity programs including the formation of the UC Summer Scholars Academy, a summer residential program for local, urban STEM High School students. She oversaw operations to award financial aid to more than 30,000 UC undergraduates and championed a Textbook Affordability Initiative, which saved UC students $1.9 million in its first year and has gained attention across Ohio for reducing costs for students and the time to graduation.
Davenport also has been a partner with UC’s Athletics Director to use mobile devices to improve student-athletes’ study habits and their access to study materials while traveling. These programs have resulted in record improvements in athletes’ academic performance and contributed to their Academic Excellence Awards from the AAC sports conference this year. Davenport also collaborated with the Athletics Director to use the newly renovated Nippert football stadium for innovative classroom spaces and similar plans are included in the basketball arena renovation.
While provost, Davenport integrated the world’s oldest co-op program with the University’s Career Development Center to form the Division for Experience-Based Learning and Career Education. Prior to her arrival at UC in 2013, Davenport served as Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at Purdue University, where she managed a broad portfolio of faculty-focused initiatives, ranging from a $70 million faculty cluster hiring initiative to faculty development programs. She launched and served as the inaugural director of the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership and started Purdue Women Lead. She also served as the director of the Discovery Learning Center, part of Purdue’s early interdisciplinary efforts to develop their innovation and commercialization hub.
Before her arrival at Purdue, Davenport served as a senior fellow at Virginia Tech, divisional dean for the social sciences at the University of Kansas and chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Kentucky.
Scholarship
An accomplished scholar, Davenport has authored more than 100 papers and articles. She has edited and published three books on the quality of work life and workplace civility:
"Destructive Organizational Communication: Processes, Consequences, and Constructive Ways of Organizing," (Co-edited with Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik, Routledge, 2009).
"Case Studies in Organizational Communication," (Routledge, 1997).
"Case Studies in Organizational Communication 2: Perspectives on Contemporary Work Life," (Guilford Press, 1990).
She also has engaged in research on telehealth and telehospice and has been a consultant on a funded project in the Peruvian Amazon to disseminate reproductive health information. Early in her career, Davenport was a consultant on projects ranging from the adoption of new technologies and the introduction of new communication innovations to the implementation of new communication training programs at companies such as IBM, Dow Corning, CIGNA and a variety of for-profit and nonprofit organizations as well as government agencies.
Davenport has been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator for more than $18 million of funding from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education and various foundations.
Awards
Davenport has been recognized for excellence in teaching and advances in technology-infused learning at multiple universities and from the National Communication Association. She was named a University of Kentucky Great Teacher, a University of Kansas W.T. Kemper Fellow for Excellence in Teaching, and a Mortar Board and Phi Beta Kappa outstanding professor. She and her team were a MIRA award winner from Techpoint for their work on game-based learning when she was at Purdue.
The University of Cincinnati’s President serves on Harvard’s COACHE National Advisory Council, Urban Serving Universities National Advisory Committee on Faculty Cluster Hiring and Urban Universities Health Board of Advisors grant to decrease health disparities by increasing diversity among health professionals. She also sits on the boards of Cintrifuse, CincyTech, Cincinnati’s Uptown Consortium, and UC Health. In 2014, she received Cincinnati’s C-Suite Award for Outstanding Leadership, and in 2013, she was named one of 40 most influential women in the 40 years of Purdue University’s celebrating Title IX.
Education
Davenport earned a PhD in communication studies with a cognate in organizational behavior and management from The University of Michigan, where she also taught in the School of Public Health and the School of Business. She graduated with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communication and journalism from Western Kentucky University in her hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky.