University Of Louisville Names Kim Schatzel As Its New President

The University of Louisville announced today that Kim Schatzel will be its next president, concluding a months-long search in which none of the names of candidates were publicly revealed. The vote of the university’s board of trustees in support of Schatzel was unanimous.

Schatzel, the current president of Towson University, a public institution in Maryland, will take over the reins from Dr. Lori Stewart-Gonzalez, who had been serving as interim president since last December, stepping into the post after Dr. Neeli Bendapudi, abruptly resigned to become president of Penn State University.

Schatzel will become the University of Louisville’s 19th president when she begins her appointment in February, 2023. After working in the private sector for several years, Schatzel taught at Boston College and joined the faculty of the University of Michigan-Dearbon as an assistant professor of marketing.

She was next appointed as the associate dean of the College of Business at UM-Dearborn in 2005 and as its dean from 2008-2012. From 2012-2016, Schatzel served as the provost and executive vice president of academic and student affairs at Eastern Michigan University. She retained that role while also serving as the university’s interim president for six months.

She began her term as president of Towson University in 2016.

Schatzel received a bachelor of science degree in economics and biology from Washington University in St. Louis in 1978. She earned her doctorate in business administration from Michigan State University, with a concentration in marketing and technology. She is a nationally recognized leader in higher education and is credited with leading several significant initiative while heading up Towson University.

About her appointment, Schatzel said, “The University of Louisville is a historic university with rich traditions that provides leadership to Kentucky as the premier metropolitan research university for the Commonwealth. I am incredibly honored to be chosen to lead such a remarkable institution and look forward to working together with our campus and community partners to advance UofL’s reputation as a pre-eminent institution nationally recognized for its excellence in research and scholarly work, education, inclusive student success, innovation, the arts and athletics – all aimed to establish the University of Louisville and the City of Louisville as a nexus for transformative solutions that advance the public good.”

The UL presidency has seen unusual turnover in the past several years with five individuals serving as president or interim president in the past six years. The turmoil began in 2016 when James Ramsey resigned as president after being accused of mismanaging funds in UL’s foundation, leading the school to sue him and other administrators for damages to the tune of $80 million (the suit was ultimately settled for $800,000).

Ramsey was succeeded by Neville Pinto, then the university’s provost, as interim president. After Pinto left to become president of the University of Cincinnati, Greg Postel, who had been the university’s interim executive vice president for health affairs, was named interim president in 2017. He was succeeded by Bendapudi in 2018.

“The university community needs some continuity,” Raymond Burse, a member of the Board of Trustees and chairman of the 13-member presidential search committee, told WDRB News in October. “They need somebody that’s going to be here, that’s going to provide consistent leadership that they can count on.”

Burse said that there were more than 60 candidates for the job, including some sitting presidents of research universities. The UL search has been managed by the executive search firm of WittKieffer.