Joan T. A. Gabel has been named the seventeenth president of the University of Minnesota. When she takes office on July 1, she will become the first woman to hold the office in the the 167-year history of the university. Gabel received a five-year contract with a salary of $640,000 annually.
The University of Minnesota enrolls just under 52,000 students. Some 53 percent of undergraduate students at the university are women.
Gabel has served as the executive vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of South Carolina since 2015. Previously, she served as dean of the University of Missouri’s Trulaske College of Business. She has also served as the DeSantis Professor and chair of the department of risk management/insurance, real estate & legal studies at Florida State University and as a faculty member at Georgia State University.
In accepting the appointment. Gabel stated “I have known for a while now that the University of Minnesota is where my family and I want to be,. But after traveling across this state, meeting so many people who love the University and seeing how our research, teaching and service have real impact here and beyond, I’m even more excited to join this community and I’m honored to be named the next president of the University of Minnesota.”
Gabel holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Haverford College in Pennsylvania and a juris doctorate from the University of Georgia.