Dr. Justin Schwartz is the sole finalist for CU Boulder’s new chancellor. (Courtesy of Pennsylvania State University)
Dr. Justin Schwartz, the current provost and executive vice president at Pennsylvania State University, is the sole finalist for the University of Colorado Boulder’s next chancellor.
According to CU System President Todd Saliman, Schwartz earned a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Schwartz has more than 30 years of experience in higher education, Saliman wrote in a release sent to university community members on Tuesday.
Schwartz has served in his most recent position at Penn State for less than a year, according to a release published on that university’s website. He held the role in an interim capacity starting in August 2022. Before that, he was dean of Penn State’s College of Engineering since 2017. He worked as a professor in North Carolina, Florida and Illinois, according to his resume.
Schwartz will appear on campus for three community open forums on Thursday, April 4.
The faculty session runs from 8 to 9 a.m., the staff session from 9:15 to 10:15 a.m. and the student session will be held from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. All three will be located in the UMC Aspen Rooms and will be livestreamed.
Schwartz is the latest in a series of finalists for university positions with no competitors. The two most recent university system presidents, Saliman and Mark Kennedy, were scrutinized after no other candidates were named as their competitors. Jennifer Sobanet, the new chancellor for the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, was not one of the finalists the UCCS search committee had announced as the top candidates for the job.
“I carefully considered each of the excellent candidates forwarded to me by the search committee. I appreciated the considerable input from the CU Boulder community regarding the search,” Saliman wrote in the release.
Saliman said discussions with the seven candidates recommended by the search committee made it clear “a multi-candidate pool was not an option.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Contact CU Independent Special Investigations Editor Henry Larson at henry.larson@colorado.edu.
