Dear Colleagues,

I write to share with you that Carl Lejuez, who has served as UConn’s chief academic officer since 2020, has accepted the position of Executive Vice President and Provost at Stony Brook University in New York. While we are very happy for Carl and wish him all the best, we are sorry to lose such an outstanding and trusted colleague. On behalf of the entire administration, I want to thank Carl for his service to UConn and wish him all the best in this new professional chapter of his life.

Carl came to UConn as our Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs only weeks after the start of the global pandemic and played an absolutely essential role in leading the academic enterprise through this immensely challenging and fraught period. He did so with the utmost skill, relying on his great foresight, determination and deep understanding of the needs of our faculty, students, and staff. It is difficult to overstate the level of effort he and his talented staff in the provost’s office needed to put forward in cooperation with countless others at UConn in order to do this successfully and continue to address the concerns and meet the needs of our academic community during this time.

Carl has also worked extremely well with our deans and he has a great appreciation of the instrumental role that the deans play in the success of our university.

Those of us who have had the chance to work closely with Carl are grateful not only for his leadership, but also for his extraordinarily collegiality. Always, but especially during challenging times, his deep sense of understanding and compassion for others was ever-present. His instinct and ability to make everything easier rather than more difficult is a vital asset for a leader of any institution, and it served him and UConn well.

Carl will be here through June. We will have plenty of time to thank him and get together to celebrate all of his accomplishments over last two years.

In the coming days I will announce the appointment of an interim provost.

Please join me in thanking Carl and in wishing him well.

Sincerely,

Radenka Maric
Interim President, University of Connecticut