Dear UHD Community,

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Eric Carl Link will join the University of Houston-Downtown as its next Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs. He will officially begin at UHD on Jan. 14, 2019, and I look forward to working alongside him in growing our university.

Dr. Link’s higher education career spans more than 20 years. He will arrive at UHD after serving as Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Purdue University Fort Wayne. In this role, he oversaw all aspects of the university’s largest college, including personnel; strategic planning; development and advancement; curriculum and program development; advising and mentoring initiatives; and recruitment and retention.

Before serving Purdue University Fort Wayne, Dr. Link spent seven years at the University of Memphis. At that institution he held several leadership roles, including Assistant Dean and Associate Dean for its College of Arts & Sciences, and Chair of the Department of English. He also led the Department of Language & Literature at North Georgia College & State University and served as that department’s Director of Graduate Studies.

In addition to being a seasoned higher education administrator, Dr. Link is an accomplished researcher and writer with four authored books, six edited books, and more than 25 journal articles and book chapters. He also is an award-winning scholar and has shared his insights on humanities topics with peers and students across the globe. As a Fulbright Senior Scholar, he taught at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University in the Ukraine. He also delivered lectures on American literature at Nanjing University, and Nanjing University of Science and Technology in Nanjing, China.

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Link and his wife Laura to UHD and to our city. I am confident they will find Houston to be a wonderful city to call home and our university to be very special.

Also, join me in thanking Ed Hugetz for his steadfast leadership over the past six years. His experience as an administrator and passion for our institution have been an asset to our faculty and students. I am grateful for his commitment and service to our institution and wish him well on his future endeavors.

And, I must extend thanks to search committee chair Dr. Jerry Johnson, Assistant Vice President for Research & Sponsored Programs, and those who coordinated interviews and campus forums in collaboration with the search firm Wheless Partners.

It is an exciting time to be a part of UHD, and Dr. Link’s arrival is yet another reason to be optimistic about our university’s future.

Sincerely,

Dr. Juan Sánchez Muñoz
UHD President