Academic Leaders Monthly

August 12, 2026

Welcome to the 2026-27 academic year! I am excited to be back with each of you, and I hope you all had a restorative summer.

We have a lot to look forward to this year as we continue our efforts to achieve the goals of Impact 2030 and see the positive outcomes of everyone’s hard work last year. Your efforts as leaders will be key to making this another outstanding year.

It looks like we’ll have another strong incoming class joining our upperclassmen as we focus on student success this year. Although the data are not finalized yet, first-year enrollment commitments are currently projected at 8,052 students, representing a 4% increase over last year. Resident first-year commitments remain particularly strong, with an estimated 11% year-over-year increase. At the graduate and professional levels, enrollment trends largely reflect national patterns, with professional deposits up an estimated 12%, led by continued growth in medicine and dentistry. Graduate deposits are down 6% year over year, driven primarily by a projected 17% decline in international graduate enrollment.

These results reflect the collective efforts of faculty, staff and campus partners across the university and their shared commitment to student access, opportunity and success. Our current enrollment projections show the U’s strong market position while underscoring the importance of aligning future growth with capacity, student success infrastructure and academic excellence.

For updates on fall 2026 enrollment, you can check UAIR’s Daily Enrollment Dashboard. This dashboard includes enrollment headcount and SCH for the upcoming fall term, including enrollment by academic level, campus and college with year-over-year comparisons. (If you are unable to access the dashboard, please contact UAIR.)

I’m eager to get this new academic year underway, and I thank you for all you do to make the University of Utah a leader in academic and research excellence.

                                                                                                             —Mitzi M. Montoya

In 2024, the University of Utah engaged the National Institute for Student Success (NISS) to evaluate the student experience and identify barriers to student success. NISS found that students often struggle to navigate a decentralized university environment where support services and communications are fragmented.

In response, a cross-functional team led by the J. Willard Marriott Library designed Answer U: a single, trusted starting point where students can quickly connect with the right people and resources without needing to understand how the university is organized. Faculty should also use Answer U to assist students who are looking for help.

Rather than replacing existing student services, Answer U makes those services easier to access by helping students determine where to go and what to do next. Students and faculty can access Answer U services via chat, phone and email. While Answer U is headquartered in the library at this time, additional locations will be opening across campus.

We encourage you to spread the word about Answer U to other faculty and students. This resource has the power to make a real difference in students’ experiences during their time at the U.

Over the summer, the EVPAA’s Office launched the Compensation Project, which systematically analyzes and sets Academic Affairs faculty salaries to advance our research and teaching missions. The project aims to align tenure-line and career-line faculty salaries to our peer AAU salaries for each person’s discipline and rank, calibrated for performance. This effectively means that many faculty salaries will increase, while none will decrease.

Phase one of the project, which was effective in July 2026, included salary adjustments for lecturer and clinical career-line faculty, as necessary, to calibrate our salaries to AAU data. Raises for lecturer and clinical career-line faculty at promotion were effective July 1, 2027.

Phase two will focus on adjustments for tenure-line faculty. Using the new compensation tools, deans and department chairs will have the ability to distribute merit-based salary adjustments as needed, with a target implementation date in January 2027. Phase three will expand faculty excellence award programs, including the creation of the Grant Research Incentive Program (GRIP), which was effective July 1, 2026, and the launch of the Provost’s Research Excellence Awards, which has a target effective date of spring 2027.

You can learn more about the compensation project on the Academic Affairs Mission-Aligned Planning page.

The U has adopted an integrated scholarship platform called Scholarship Universe, which allows students to search and apply for scholarships they may qualify for in one place, including institutional and external scholarships.

As of July 2026, the cross-functional team leading this work through the Student Experience Project has migrated 2,235 scholarship opportunities into the system, representing nearly every institutional scholarship currently identified by the university.

This platform will not only ensure that students have an easier time securing financial aid, but also give faculty and staff better insight into scholarship demand and allow them to make decisions about where available funds should be allocated.

Read more about the platform and faculty and staff efforts to implement it on @theU.

With the start of a new school year, Student Affairs has created a faculty guide that highlights programs, services and opportunities available across the division.

As students ask for help or faculty notice that a student may need support, this guide acts as a quick reference listing resources in three categories: Student Engagement & Belonging, Student Health & Wellness and Support & Resources.

As faculty, you can help students succeed not only academically, but physically, mentally and socially as well. This guide will help you know what resources are available for students and how to refer students based on their needs.

For more information, see this blog post from Student Affairs.

The J. Willard Marriott Library provides university-wide access to both The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed, which are two of the most widely read publications covering higher education. They provide news, in-depth analysis, state and national policy commentary, reports and practical resources on university leadership, teaching and learning, research, policy, finance, enrollment and the changing landscape of higher education.

To access these resources while on campus, head straight to The Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed’s webpages. To access them while off campus, use these proxy links: The Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed.

Your University of Utah email address also allows you to create a free, personal account with each publication through the library's site license, giving you access to newsletters, saved content and other personalized features.

The University of Utah has opened a new Center for Civic Discourse and Debate (CCDD) in the College of Humanities, led by Michael Middleton, a professor of communication.

The center is based on the idea that skills required for productive civic participation can be taught and that disagreement can be constructive. While disagreement and debate can often sound contentious, students who participate in structured debate outperform their peers academically, report higher communication confidence and are more likely to take on leadership roles.

Housed in the CCDD as a collaboration between the Colleges of Liberal Arts & Sciences and the John R. Park Debate Society, Debate Across the Curriculum embeds structured debate into courses across disciplines—chemistry, history, literature, business, medicine—anywhere sustained inquiry is already happening.

Debate Across the Curriculum is designed to reach every student, regardless of prior inclination. To learn more about CCDD, visit this article on @theU.

The Research Post recently published an article that succinctly encapsulates the importance of behind-the-scenes processes when conducting research on campus.

Caren Frost, Senior Associate Vice President for Research Integrity & Compliance, shared, “When we think about gold standard science, we’re really thinking about best practices. … Rigor, reproducibility and replicability are things we should all be concentrating on.”

Some of the basic tenets of successful research include trusting colleagues and university systems, persisting despite setbacks, collaborating with and mentoring other researchers and learning from the processes described in other academic articles.

The article is a great reminder of some basic principles that help researchers succeed in discovering new information and teaching student researchers. You can read it here.

Dr. Nathan Mack has been named as the University of Utah’s new Executive Director of Admissions and Transition Programs, effective Sept. 1.

Reporting to Paul Kohn, Senior Vice Provost for Strategic Enrollment and Student Success, Mack will lead the Office of Admissions, Office of Orientation and Transition and Early College Programs. He will help strengthen the university's efforts to attract, enroll and successfully transition talented students from Utah, across the nation and around the world, while enhancing the student experience from first point of contact through matriculation.

In this role, Mack will develop and implement strategic admissions and recruitment initiatives that align with the U’s goals. He will leverage data, technology and emerging tools to enhance recruitment strategies, inform decision-making and improve operational efficiency across the enrollment lifecycle.

Mack brings nearly two decades of experience in undergraduate admissions, student recruitment and enrollment strategy. He most recently served as Associate Director of Admission at the University of Southern California and has previously held admissions roles at Franklin University Switzerland, The University of Alabama in Huntsville and the University of Kansas.

Three members of the Academic Affairs leadership team have recently received promotions and/or new titles.

Sarah Projansky has been promoted to Senior Vice Provost for Faculty, reflecting the expansion of her leadership responsibilities in Academic Affairs.

Randy McCrillis has been promoted to Vice Provost for Global Engagement and University Connected Learning. He had been serving as interim leader of UCL since last June, in addition to fulfilling his duties as Senior International Officer.

Anshuman Razdan has added Vice Provost to his previous title of Chief Research Officer for Planning and Partnerships.

A seventh University of Utah professor has been named a Fulbright Scholar for 2026-27: Associate Professor Luis Ibarra.

He joins the other six recipients for 2026-27: Associate Professor Shane Macfarlan, Professor and Chief Curator of the Natural History Museum of Utah Tyler Faith, S.J. Quinney Chair and Professor Laura Kessler, Associate Professor Jon Fisk, Associate Professor Udita Gupta and Associate Professor Barbara Jones.

The prestigious honor recognizes professors’ academic excellence and leadership potential. Ibarra will spend his year at Nagoya University in Japan studying how buildings respond to earthquakes.

Hosted by International Student & Scholar Services as part of International Education Week, the Global Community Awards will recognize outstanding contributions to international education in three categories: Global Citizen Award (Student), Global Engagement Champion Award (Faculty/Staff), and Excellence in Internationalization Award (Department/Office)

If you know someone who makes campus a more welcoming, inclusive and globally engaged community, nominate them at this link by Sept. 1.

Add Announcements and Updates

If you would like to add announcements or updates to future newsletter issues, please reach out to Greg Kratz (greg.kratz@utah.edu).