Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear Highlanders,

I am very pleased to announce that Dr. John A. Pelesko has accepted the opportunity to become NJIT’s next provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. John will assume his new post on August 1, 2023. Until then, Dr. Atam P. Dhawan will continue to serve as NJIT’s interim provost.

John, who earned his Ph.D. in Mathematical Sciences from NJIT, emerged from an exceptionally talented pool of candidates for this position and brings to our university both impressive credentials and rich experience. The executive search firm, AGB Search, was retained to facilitate the process, and the search committee was led by co-chairs Senior Vice President Catherine Brennan and Dr. Wunmi Sadiq.

Board of Trustees and Provost Search Committee member Elisa Charters said, "This was an impressively collaborative process, and it was clear that Dr. Pelesko differentiated himself with specific strengths that directly align with NJIT’s mission, vision and goals of shared governance, faculty and student engagement, financial management, advancing research as an R1 institution across all disciplines, and driving student success and career placement. He also demonstrated a determination to ensure the highest levels of inclusion and belonging, which is of critical importance to all of our stakeholders.”

At present, John is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Delaware and is a professor of Mathematical Sciences. He has served as dean since 2019, after spending the prior year as interim dean. As dean of Delaware’s largest and most diverse college, the breadth and complexity of his position have prepared him well for his new role at NJIT.  John has several noteworthy accomplishments during his tenure. He began an Early College Credit Program that provides free dual-enrollment opportunities to all students across the State of Delaware. He developed a recruiting process that led to the college’s largest and best yielding incoming class ever. He established new alumni and peer-to-peer mentoring programs to support undergraduate majors both as they enter the university and as they enter the workforce. He launched the College of Arts and Sciences Student Success Center, a unit that now provides both professional advising and co-curricular coaching for all undergraduate students. And he developed a range of new and innovative academic programs that led to new revenue and resource opportunities and have enabled Delaware to invest in faculty and build an environment to encourage increased research grant activity. Sponsored expenditures in the College of Arts and Sciences have grown by more than 31% during John’s tenure. Additionally, John has overseen the recruitment of more than 150 permanent faculty members as dean.

Prior to serving as dean, John held positions as associate dean for the Natural Sciences, department chair for the Department of Mathematical Sciences, director of the graduate program for the Department of Mathematical Sciences, and as president of the College of Arts and Sciences Senate. In each of his roles, John demonstrated the ability to innovate, support student success, and promote excellence among faculty and professional staff. John also has been a prolific researcher and successful fundraiser throughout his career.

Chair of the NJIT Board of Trustees Robert Cohen said of the selection, "With John, we have a proven leader who appreciates NJIT's amazing academic and research capabilities. His background and experience complement our current state, and I am certain John is the right leader to further our academic journey.  NJIT's continued high quality of our education and the tremendous positive impact of our research are part of who we are, and we can't simply stand still. We always need to be looking at future potential.  John understands this well."

During the search process, John said, “I am excited about returning to the institution where I began my academic career. NJIT embodies the attributes that I value in an institution – a deep commitment to access and student success, a world-class research enterprise, an innovative, entrepreneurial, and inclusive culture, and an ambition to continue to extend its local, regional, national, and global impact. Having personally experienced the transformative power of an NJIT education and having seen the incredible transformation that NJIT has undergone during the last decade, this is an incredibly exciting opportunity.”

Please join me in congratulating and welcoming John back to NJIT. Also, please join me in thanking all the members of the provost search committee for their hard work and collaboration throughout this process, which has yielded a tremendous result.

Sincerely,

Teik C. Lim

NJIT President