Carol Fierke, the current provost at Texas A&M University, is the final candidate to be the next executive vice president and provost at the University of Minnesota. 

Fierke has a local connection, graduating in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She has a Ph.D. from Brandeis University in biochemistry and has done postdoctoral study at Pennsylvania State University. 

Unlike the other three candidates, Fierke is currently a provost and oversees 17 colleges and schools at Texas A&M. She has experience balancing a billion-dollar-budget, like the budget at the University, and has developed a five-year strategic plan, a current undertaking at the University of Minnesota. 

Before being a provost, Fierke served as a dean of the graduate school at the University of Michigan. She has previously taught at Michigan and Duke University. She has published 251 research articles.

At Michigan she developed a committee to help faculty better recruit women and underrepresented minorities to their departments. In 2016 she received an award from the American Chemical Society for encouraging women to get into STEM fields. 

“If you went and Googled scientist you got basically no pictures of women, no pictures of minorities,” Fierke said in a 2016 interview for the award. “When you are different there are all kinds of little barriers, but those little barriers add up.”

Fierke will meet the University community at a public forum at Northrop Monday afternoon.