Russell Moore stepping down as CU Boulder provost after nearly 14 years

Provost Russell Moore today announced he will be stepping down from his position as provost of the Boulder campus after 14 years of service in that role. Moore is CU Boulder’s longest serving provost and the longest continuously serving provost among the institutions in CU Boulder’s peer group, the Association of American Universities. 

He will continue to serve in his role until Chancellor Justin Schwartz names a new provost following a national search.

“The timing of this move gives Chancellor Schwartz the opportunity to seek new academic leadership and shape the academic mission according to his goals for CU Boulder,” Moore said.

Moore said he will step away “with pride in and satisfaction with my record of accomplishment,” which he said includes “having the most diverse and talented academic affairs leadership team in the history of the campus, and building an academic culture forged in openness and transparency and carried out in a spirit of compassion, cooperation and concern, and enriched with a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.”

During Moore’s time as provost: 

The university’s total enrollment grew from 32,252 undergraduate and graduate students in the 2011–12 academic year—Moore’ first full year as provost—to 37,153 in the 2023–24 academic year, an increase of 15%.
The university’s sponsored research funding grew from $380.7 million in the 2011–12 academic year to $684.2 million in the 2022–23 year, an increase of 80%.
He led a transformation of CU Boulder’s research and innovation culture, resulting in CU Boulder being recognized in 2023 as a leading university for startup creation. The most recent national data from AUTM (the leading global organization for recording data on university commercialization) showed that CU's creation of startups based on university discoveries was fifth among all U.S. universities.
He brought together the university’s academic and cocurricular missions in a series of projects dating from 2016 to advance student success. CU’s second fall retention rate for first-year students hit an all-time high of 89.1% in fall 2023 for the fall 2022 cohort.
He co-led the 2017 launch of the Academic Futures project, a faculty, staff and student grassroots-visioning effort to create a guiding blueprint for the university’s academic mission.
He completed the reorganization of the College of Arts and Sciences, the university’s largest college, in a five-year project from 2018 to 2023; led the effort to establish the College of Media, Communication, and Information (CMCI), completed in 2015 and CU Boulder’s first new college in 50 years; and called for the integration of the program in Environmental Design into CMCI in 2023.
He established a commitment to openness and transparency in shared governance and decision-making and is the first CU academic leader to conduct regular personal outreach to all the directorates within academic affairs, including CU Boulder’s nine colleges and schools, twice per year, via the provost’s open forums.  
He established a bedrock commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and built the most diverse leadership team in the history of the academic affairs division.
He led the academic mission through the cataclysms of the COVID-19 pandemic, the confrontations and reconciliations within the academic community following the murder of George Floyd and other Black citizens, and the Marshall Fire, which claimed Moore’s own home.

Chancellor Schwartz heralded Moore’s service.

“Russ Moore has led CU Boulder’s academic mission through a time of bold transition and redefinition,” Schwartz said. “What he has achieved is significant, and how he did it is even more so: by listening, committing to action, and anchoring the mission in our best values. On behalf of our entire campus community, we are grateful for Russ’s service and for all that he has achieved.”

There will be a national search for Moore’s successor, and the university will share more information on the search process in the coming days and weeks.

Moore was named provost by then Chancellor Philip DiStefano on Oct. 13, 2010, and had previously served as interim provost from July 1, 2010, until his permanent appointment. Prior to that, he was interim vice chancellor for research from May 2009 to June 2010.

Moore also served as associate vice chancellor for research (2006–09), as chair of kinesiology and applied physiology (now integrative physiology) from 1994 to 2001, and was an assistant professor (1984–86), associate professor (1993–96) and then full professor (1996–present) in that department.

Moore holds an adjunct professorship in medicine (cardiology) at the University of Colorado's Anschutz Medical Campus at the University of Colorado Denver. He also was an assistant and associate professor (1986–93) in the department of medicine and the department of cellular and molecular physiology at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He did postdoctoral work at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas (1981–84).