Karla Hughes

Professor, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs

 

Posted: 2-27-07
 

Provost named at MSU

Morehead State University President Wayne D. Andrews today announced that he is asking the Board of Regents at its March 8 meeting to approve the appointment of Dr. Karla Hughes of East Carolina University as MSU’s next chief academic officer.

Dr. Hughes, who was selected in a national search, currently serves as dean of ECU’s College of Human Ecology. She would take office as provost and vice president for academic affairs on July 16, succeeding Dr. Michael R. Moore, who is returning to teaching after 10 years in the position. “Dr. Hughes has established a strong reputation as an academic leader of vision,

energy and integrity,” Dr. Andrews said. “I am confident she can help our faculty take us to even greater heights as a top tier public regional university.” 
 
He described Dr. Hughes as “the right person at the right time” to become MSU’s 10th chief academic officer and the second to hold the title of provost.
 
Morehead State University, located in the foothills of the Daniel Boone National Forest in Rowan County, midway between Lexington, Ky., and Huntington, WVa., enrolls more than 9,000 students from 100 Kentucky counties, 42 states and 37 nations. For the third consecutive year MSU was listed as one of the top public universities in the South in the 2007 edition of "America's Best Colleges" by U.S.News & World Report. And in January of this year, Morehead State became one of only 76 institutions of higher education in the United States – public and private – to be classified as a “community engagement institution” by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
 
“As we sometimes say, East Carolina’s loss is Morehead State’s gain,” said James LeRoy Smith, provost and vice president for academic affairs to whom Dean Hughes reports. “It should come as no surprise that a well-respected university like Morehead State would find a proven and innovative leader like Karla Hughes to be a very attractive candidate for provost.”
 
An administrator and faculty member at East Carolina since 2000, she has been dean of the College of Human Ecology since it was created in 2004. She has oversight of seven units which includes five departments with 130 faculty and staff who support 1,400 graduate and undergraduate students, as well as an off-campus Family Therapy Center affiliated with the first Ph.D. program in Medical Family Therapy in the United States.
 
Dr. Hughes spent the 2005-06 academic year as a fellow with the American Council on Education where she was placed in the Office of the President at the University of North Carolina System. In addition to traveling to eight ACE campuses, she was invited to visit ad-ministrators at the Universities of Venda and Western Cape, as well as Tschwane University of Technology, and the Office of Higher Education-South Africa. While in South Africa, she observed a newly reorganized, international system of higher education.
 
She previously was a tenured professor and chair of the Department of Human Sciences in the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences at Middle Tennessee State University at Murfreesboro, from 1994-2000. Dr. Hughes was a tenured associate professor and unit leader for the state food and nutrition office in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Re-sources, and the College of Human Environmental Sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia, 1980-1994.
 
Dr. Hughes also held posts at Kansas State University in Manhattan, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University at Blacksburg.
 
Active in securing funds for individual and corporate gifts of $1,475,000 for various programs at East Carolina from 2001-06, she has had more than 30 other grants funded during her profes-sional career.
 
She has published numerous articles in professional journals, and presented 40 papers at meetings and conferences across the country. In addition, she was a professional consultant on a variety of topics including nutrition, team building, creative thinking, and leadership styles for more than 10 years and holds memberships in various service, professional and honorary organizations.
 
Dr. Hughes earned the Bachelor and Master of Science degrees majoring in nutrition from Kansas State University. She received the Ph.D. degree in agriculture majoring in animal science from the University of Tennessee, and completed postgraduate work in the College of Business and Public Administration at University of Missouri-Columbia, studying personnel management, organizational theory and finance.
 
She and her husband are parents of a daughter who is in college.