Contact: Jay Blanton

Michael T. Nietzel

As provost, Nietzel guided a number of important initiatives in the university’s ongoing effort to achieve top-20 status.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 4, 2005) -- University of Kentucky Provost Michael T. Nietzel, the university’s highest-ranking academic officer, has been chosen as the next president of Southwest Missouri State University.

“Mike Nietzel has been a key element in the development of my administration and was instrumental in moving this institution to the provost model,” UK President Lee T. Todd Jr. said. “This is one of those bittersweet moments for me. I am extremely proud of my friend for receiving this great opportunity to be a university president at an outstanding institution. But I am also very disappointed that UK will be losing a true scholar who has served me and this university so well.”

“The University of Kentucky has defined my adult and professional life, and in the course of doing so, has afforded me more opportunities and rewards than I ever would have dreamed possible,” Nietzel said. “Still, I realize that I have reached the point where I want a chance to lead a strong institution to its own higher ground, and I believe that SMSU presents me an excellent chance to do that. I am honored by its offer to be president.”

Nietzel, 57, became UK’s first provost on Nov. 1, 2002, after having served as acting provost upon appointment by Todd on July 3, 2001. He had served as dean of The Graduate School at UK from 1997 to 2001.

As provost, Nietzel guided a number of important initiatives in the university’s ongoing effort to achieve top-20 status. He helped oversee the establishment of a provost model of organization that ultimately included all the colleges of the Academic Health Center as well as the colleges on the North campus. He hired a large number of academic administrators, including eight new deans and a vice president for student affairs; he directed the reorganization of the Office of Undergraduate Admission and the Office of the Registrar to improve recruitment and enrollment of stellar students; and he developed a system of academic budgeting that based budget decisions on empirical data covering five-year trends in enrollments, retention, graduation rates and research productivity.

He was a faculty member in the UK Department of Psychology from 1973 to the present and holds a joint appointment to the faculty of the UK College of Law.

Nietzel earned his bachelor’s degree at Wheaton College in 1969 and his master’s (1972) and doctoral (1973) degrees from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

More information is available at this Southwest Missouri State University site.