Candidate info

Garnett Stokes has been at the University of Missouri since February 2015 as the provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, though she also spent a few recent months as interim chancellor on the Columbia, Mo., campus.

The flagship institution within the larger University of Missouri system, MU has about 31,000 students and a budget of about $2.2 billion. It boasts a “highest research activity” Carnegie Classification ranking and NCAA Division I athletic department with 18 sports.

But MU has endured significant budget cuts — forcing about $60 million in spending reductions this year — and enrollment losses, which some trace to the racially charged campus protests that garnered national media attention in the fall of 2015.

Before Missouri, Stokes was provost and briefly interim president at Florida State University.

She was at the University of Georgia from 19912011, rising to dean of the school’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

Stokes has a doctorate in industrial/organizational psychology from the University of Georgia, where she also earned her master’s degree.

Stokes said she is “not on the market” for a new job, but felt compelled to consider the UNM presidency, citing it as a natural career step and its location in a state that both she and her husband, a forensic psychologist, like.

At Missouri, she makes $375,000 a year, according to the St. Louis PostDispatch’s online state employee salary database.