UF trustees to vote on naming Kent Fuchs interim president

Kent Fuchs has agreed to serve as interim president, and the UF Board of Trustees will take up the matter during a special meeting this afternoon.

Fuchs would take office effective August 1. UF President Ben Sasse’s resignation, announced Thursday, is effective July 31.

Today’s board meeting begins at 5:30 p.m.

Fuchs served as UF president from 2015 to 2023, when Sasse took office. Earlier this year, he began teaching an electrical engineering class in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering after taking a one-year sabbatical.

Fuchs has nearly 40 years of experience as an academic leader and faculty member at four different national research and land-grant universities. Prior to UF, he was at Cornell University, where he served as Provost and Dean of Engineering. He was previously a faculty member in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and then served as School Head at Purdue.

During his time as president, UF saw unprecedented growth in its national stature.