The Daily Cougar

Issue date: 10/16/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Photo courtesy of University of Southern Florida Renu Khator is currently the provost and senior vice president at the University of Southern Florida. The UH System Board of Regents unanimously approved her sole finalist as the UH president on Monday.

She'll be the first foreign-born president of the UH System and the second woman to have the title. She's also among the few who have been a minority.

Her name is Renu Khator.

And she is full of enthusiasm.

"I'm honored, privileged," she said Monday in a phone interview. "I think UH is so committed to its metropolitan mission in providing access to success to students, its bold vision to be a top-tier institution - all of those are grounds for an excellent university."

Khator (pronounced rah-NEW ka-TOOR), 52, was presented as to the UH System Board of Regents on Monday as the sole finalist for the position and was unanimously approved. Texas law requires the board to give the public 21 days before finalizing the appointment. She is expected to start in her role as president in January 2008, and she will be the third person to be both UH System chancellor and president, following in the footsteps of Arthur K. Smith and Jay Gogue.

She is now the provost and senior vice president at the University of South Florida, which has a similar make-up to UH. USF is ranked as one of the top 63 public research universities and has more than 45,000 students. The USF system has four campuses and is also known as being one of the most "community-engaged" public universities, according to USF's Web site.

"At USF and at UH, there's a lot of similarities," Khator said. "Both are young universities, both are metropolitan, both are focused on students and making sure that the university is accessible to as many people as possible."

Khator did not detail any specific plans for the University but did talk about some potential obstacles UH will have to overcome in the future.

"I can tell you that the biggest challenge of universities located in a big city like Houston is how to provide access to a growing population in a growing city in a growing state," she said.

She said among those challenges is how the university should interact with the community. Khator said she also wants to look at where the University's role is in Houston regarding workforce, intellectual capital and global economy.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools