Joseph Meisel will succeed Vincent Tompkins '84 as the University's deputy provost Oct. 1. The appointment marks the end of a summer-long national search coordinated by Associate Provost Nancy Dunbar and Provost David Kertzer '69 P'95 P'98, which began after Tompkins stepped down on July 1 to head a private school based in New York.
Meisel, a Columbia graduate, will be coming to Brown after spending the last 11 years as a program officer in charge of humanities at the Andrew Mellon Foundation. He also worked in Columbia's Office of Management and Budget.
"I'm absolutely delighted to have been chosen as Brown's next deputy provost and am eagerly looking forward to getting started," Meisel wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. "The opportunity to work at such an excellent institution as Brown, with its outstanding people and many interesting developments underway, was enormously compelling."
According to a University press release, Meisel helped coordinate and implement a variety of scholarly programs that looked to provided "direct support to individual students and faculty scholars as well as funds for libraries, centers, and scholarly publishing," while looking to strengthen both the humanities and social sciences within universities.
His work on the staff of Columbia's central budget office was, according to Meisel, a key element in helping him learn the inner workings of large universities, providing him with opportunities to work in close coordination with the provost in matters of both academic and financial planning. "Taken together, these experiences have given me a broad perspective on a wide range of issues that universities must contend with, and the concerns and interests of higher education's key constituents," Meisel wrote.
Meisel's familiarity with university management, coupled with his experience in academic administration and program development, were important in the decision to hire him, said Kertzer.
As deputy provost, Meisel's responsibilities will include "acting as a representative to the provost in the oversight of centers and institutes at Brown, particularly with regard to those with separate endowments," Kertzer said. He will also play a role in the budget committee of the University.
