Dear Colleagues:

I am pleased to recommend the appointment of Laurie McCauley to serve as the University of Michigan’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. The Board of Regents will consider the appointment at its meeting next week.

She currently serves as dean and the William K. and Mary Anne Najjar professor of periodontics in our School of Dentistry, with an additional appointment as a professor of pathology in our Medical School. Dr. McCauley would begin May 16, following the previously announced departure of Provost Susan M. Collins, and continue for 13 months.
During her service as dean since 2013, she has galvanized the school around a shared vision that focuses on five domains: people, education, research and discovery, patient care and responsible growth and sustainability. The School of Dentistry has been ranked first in the nation for seven consecutive years by QS World University Rankings and first in the world for five consecutive years by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy.
Dean McCauley oversaw a transformative $142 million expansion and renovation project of the school’s clinical and education facilities with funding secured from the state of Michigan, and from institutional and donor sources. She is one of the longest-serving deans among the university’s current academic leadership group, is the chair of the health sciences deans council and has been the academic co-lead on the planning efforts for the university’s next major capital campaign.

After earning her B.S., D.D.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Ohio State, she spent a few years in private practice before joining the U-M’s School of Dentistry faculty as an assistant professor in 1992. For more than 25 years, Dean McCauley has led an active research program in hormonal controls of bone remodeling, parathyroid hormone anabolic actions in bone, and prostate cancer skeletal metastasis. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Our university will greatly benefit from Dean McCauley’s proven leadership skills, depth of experience, and demonstrated commitment to teaching, discovery and higher education.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to congratulate again Provost Collins on being named president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. This is a tremendous achievement and a reflection of her expertise and integrity.

Sincerely,

Mary Sue Coleman
President