Arney now EVP and provost

UTRGV Deputy President Janna Arney will now serve as executive vice president and provost, the university has announced.

The Office of the President made the announcement in a campuswide email sent Sept. 17.

Arney said she is pleased and honored to have the opportunity to serve in this capacity.

“It continues to be an honor to contribute to UTRGV’s success and the success of our amazing students,” Arney wrote in an email to The Rider last Wednesday.

Her new role will have similar responsibilities as her previous one.

“I had direct oversight for several units but in my deputy president role, my role was to serve in the president’s stead to oversee the institution as a whole,” she said. “As denoted on the organizational chart, you can see how that structure works and so it’s the institution as a whole. …  The EVP replaces the deputy president because that’s essentially the oversight of the institution as a whole.”

Arney also wrote, as interim provost, she was initially charged to reintegrate the divisions of Academic Affairs, Health Affairs, Student Success, Strategic Enrollment and Student Affairs, and Research, Graduate Studies, and New Program Development into a larger unit, which has been accomplished.

“As EVP and Provost, I will continue to have direct oversight for all of these divisions as well as the offices of Institutional Accreditation and Program Development, Curriculum and Institutional Assessment, Faculty Success and Diversity, B3 Institute, Faculty Ombudsman, and Victim Advocacy and Violence Prevention,” she wrote in the email.

Arney had served as deputy president since 2017 and associate provost for faculty and academic affairs at legacy institution University of Texas at Brownsville.

“Then, at UTRGV, I was vice president for operations and chief of staff, and then, my deputy president title was also an executive vice president title,” she said.

In the email sent to The Rider, Arney wrote that she returned to the Rio Grande Valley in 2002 as an assistant professor in the School of Business at University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College and began an administrative career with the university in 2006 where she served as associate provost for faculty and Academic Affairs.

“In this role, I also co-chaired the transition team coordinating the separation of the UTB/TSC partnership,” Arney wrote in the email. “In 2014, I was selected to serve as the first Vice President for Operations and Chief of Staff to the President at UTRGV. In my role as vice president for operations, I had direct oversight for Human Resources, Legal Affairs, University Marketing and Communications, Security and Campus Affairs, Strategic Analysis and Institutional Reporting, Institutional Compliance, and Information Security. In 2017, I was promoted to Deputy President.”

Arney said she is excited to work with the campus community and faculty on the launch of the next five-year strategic plan.

“Continuing to expand our educational opportunities for our students, which include undergraduate, but also several graduate programs, the launch of our new

Ph.D.’s, really building and improving our research infrastructure, which not only benefits our faculty but

also benefits the institution and its ability to secure external funding,” she said. “But, primarily benefits our students in that the opportunities for undergraduate, graduate research are more abundant which allows them to really delve into their area of study and really enriches the educational opportunities. … And that’s such a wonderful experience for students, so we’re very excited about that.”

On Feb. 28, 2018, the Office of the President sent a campuswide email announcing that a new organizational structure would include three executive vice presidents: an executive vice president for Academic Affairs, Student Success, and P-16 Integration; an executive vice president for Research, Graduate Studies, and New Program Development; and an executive vice president for Health Affairs.

Patrick Gonzales, associate vice president for marketing and communications, said 2018 was the announcement of three executive vice presidents and since then, one executive vice president and the provost, Patricia McHatton, have left the university, which then led to Arney being named interim provost.

“So of those three that are mentioned in that email, Parwinder Grewal [executive vice president for Research, Graduate Studies & New Program Development] is the remaining executive vice president among those three,” Gonzales said. “A lot has happened since that 2018 email. Every change has been announced by

[UTRGV President Guy] Bailey in his email messages.”