Thailand RPCV Brady J. Deaton is new chancellor of the University of Missouri's flagship campus in Columbia
Mizzou gets new chancellor
By Susan C. Thomson
Of the Post-Dispatch
10/04/2004
Advertisement
The new chancellor of the University of Missouri's flagship campus in Columbia is a known campus quantity.
Brady J. Deaton -- recommended for the job by university system president Elson S. Floyd and unanimously approved by the university's Board of Curators in a telephone conference call this afternoon -- has been at Mizzou for 15 years.
He began as a professor of agricultural economics and rose to be interim chancellor, assuming that job just a month ago after chancellor Richard L. Wallace retired.
Until Floyd announced his choice of Deaton Friday, signs pointed to a national search for Wallace's replacement, with system spokesman Joe Moore saying more than once that Floyd was waiting for the fall semester to start before picking a search committee.
Moore said Monday that Floyd had become convinced that Deaton was "the perfect person" for the job. "He is already in the job and doing very well and has the respect of the faculty staff and students as well as Dr. Floyd and the board," Moore said.
Brian Laoruangroch, Mizzou's student body president, agreed with that assessment. He described Deaton as "a great candidate," "accessible to students" and "very recognizable around campus." "He's always been willing to listen to student opinions and our concerns," he said.
Deaton, 62, let it be known months ago that he wanted the job. In a telephone interview Monday he said it thought it "more appropriate to do that than to act reticent and mislead anyone."
In that same interview, he said his priorities as chancellor would include expanding research, international programs and MU's role as an engine of statewide economic development. He also said he would press for state funding for a new medical research building and look to MU's current $600 million capital campaign for seed money for a new performing arts center.
Deaton holds a doctorate in agricultural economics from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He was a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching vocational agriculture in Thailand, in the early 1960s. He went on to work as a teacher, administrator or researcher at Virginia Polytechnic and State University, the University of Tennessee, the University of Kentucky, the University of Minnesota and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Earlier this year he was an unsuccessful candidate for president of the University of Tennessee. He describes his interests as "sports of all kinds"- including hiking, camping, fishing swimming and running-plus reading and listening to music.
As chancellor, Deaton will get a salary of $255,000 and the use of a university car-the same as when he was interim chancellor and the same as the leaders of the university system's three other campuses.
Reporter Susan C. Thomson
E-mail: sthomson@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8411
