UNM provost to become president at this Ohio university

University of New Mexico Provost James Holloway will be leaving the school and heading east this summer. Holloway has taken the position of president for the University of Toledo in Ohio.

The move was announced in a campus-wide email sent out Thursday by UNM President Garnett Stokes.

“James has been an extraordinary leader and colleague at The University of New Mexico, and I am confident that he will bring the same vision, integrity, and dedication to the University of Toledo,” Stokes wrote. “James is one of the most positive and enthusiastic leaders anywhere, bringing an infectious joy to his job that makes our campus a better and brighter place. We can vouch that Toledo has the right person for the job.”

Holloway will take the reins of the university in July, becoming its 19th president.

In the email, Stokes says she will appoint an interim provost in the coming days and “will immediately begin planning for a national search” for his replacement.

“When I first moved to the University of New Mexico, one of the things that I was really interested in, and that drew me to New Mexico, was a university that cared about its place,” Holloway said in a phone interview Friday. “Not every university is about its place. The University of Toledo is about its place. It’s about Toledo, Lucas County, northwest Ohio, and being a servant to advancing the communities in that region.”

Holloway joined UNM as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs in the summer of 2019 after a lengthy career at the University of Michigan, according to UNM. He said working closely with Stokes inspired him to want to become a university president himself. He said that the pandemic posed the biggest challenge during his tenure, but that he was proud of the way the university navigated the situation.

“I’m going to miss the people of New Mexico. I’ve got folks that I’ve grown to love at the university, who I’ve worked with now for six years, who are just amazing human beings who wake up every day thinking about how they can educate young people,” Holloway said.

He added that he will also miss red chile.