Votruba Chosen as New President of Northern Kentucky University

When James Votruba was growing up in East Lansing, he fondly remembers having MSU professors visit after returning from places like Thailand and Nigeria.

It seemed to the young man as if the professors were taking the university to the people. It would be a theme that would resonate throughout Votruba’s professional life.

"I grew up in East Lansing next to Michigan State, whose president felt that this university had a special mission to the public. It’s no wonder that this university has always been central to the way I think about my work, and the career choices I’ve made."

The most recent career choice for Votruba is becoming president of Northern Kentucky University. He left MSU in July after eight years as vice provost for university outreach.

"Frankly, I never set out to be a college president," Votruba said. "What I have set out to do is work that I felt was important, and work that I was prepared to do and that would make a contribution. That’s what brought me back to Michigan State. I felt that there was no more important work than right here at Michigan State."

The Votruba family’s links to the college run deep. In addition to being an alumnus and on the faculty, Votruba’s wife, Rachel, was head advisor for four years at the college.

Votruba earned all three of his degrees from MSU, and he credits many of his experiences at the university with his achievements.

Particularly important to his development, he said, was his doctoral work in the Department of Educational Administration, which set the intellectual tone of his career. "My studies there gave me a chance to deepen my understanding of higher education, and how higher education fits in a larger social context. That’s been the key for me."

A second important event in his development, he said, came when as a graduate student he was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation-supported Presidential Fellowship. It gave him the opportunity to work with then-President Clifford Wharton’s office for a year. "That was powerful because it gave me a chance to see from the perspective of the president long before I would fulfill such responsibilities."

The third major career development came a few years later, when Wharton appointed him to a task force he had created to look at MSU and its role in lifelong education. The experience proved powerful, he said, because the report the group produced described a world in which knowledge would grow exponentially and the need to learn throughout a lifespan would become a necessity for almost everyone.

These events, more than any others, shaped Votruba’s views that institutions of higher education had the power to use knowledge to improve the lives of people, and expanding accessibility to universities was critical.

Votruba returned to MSU eight years ago after serving six years at the State University of New York at Binghampton. There, he had been the dean of the School of Education and Human Development and was later interim provost and vice president for academic affairs.

During the eight years at MSU, he sought to make the university’s pro-grams and research more accessible, and was responsible for a five-year, $10.2-million Kellogg Foundation grant to strengthen the relationship between the campus and the public agenda.

In his new role as president of Northern Kentucky, Votruba said he plans to emphasize three core values. The first is excellence in all forms and as measured by outcomes. Another is access, particularly how the university makes itself available to people in the greater Cincinnati area. The final value he plans to emphasize is public engagement and the role of the university in helping to solve problems.

It is in many ways, he said, the sum of all he has learned during a long career in higher education. Heading to Northern Kentucky will be challenge, he said, because it is markedly different from MSU. It is an urban school with a student body of 12,000, an d it is a relatively young school. It is 30 years old.

For Jim Votruba, it is an opportunity of a lifetime.

"I just think that there is no place that I would have rather have been these last eight years than Michigan State, and there is no more important work in society, in my opinion, than the work that is done by universities, whether it’s Michigan State or Northern Kentucky. I am most fortunate to have had a role to play here, and looking forward to the role I’ll play down there.