Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Dr. Laura Huenneke is Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at
Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. She came to the university as Dean of
the College of Arts & Sciences and Professor of Biological Sciences in
2003, and then served three years as Dean of Engineering & Natural Sciences
before becoming Vice President for Research.
In July 2012 she became Provost and chief academic officer for the
institution.
Before coming to NAU, Laura spent 16 years on the faculty at New Mexico
State University in Las Cruces, where she became Regents’ Professor and served
five years as department chair in Biology. She served as Lead
Investigator/Project Director for the NSF-funded Jornada Basin Long-Term Ecological ResearchProgram, a consortium of multiple universities and federal agencies focused
on desert ecosystem structure and function.
She is currently Lead Investigator for the Partnership for Native
American Cancer Prevention, a $15.7 million NIH investment to build NAU's
research and training capacity.
Laura earned her Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Cornell
University. Her research interests pertain to the influence of biological
diversity on ecosystem structure and function. She is also committed to the
effective communication of scientific and ecological understanding to the
public, to K-12 educators and students, and to policy-makers. In 1999 she was
selected as one of the initial cohort of Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellows,
a program promoting the development of communication and leadership skills
among environmental scientists. In 2012 she was named a Fellow of the
Ecological Society of America, in recognition of distinguished contributions to
the discipline.
Laura has served on the boards of the Las Cruces Natural History Museum, the
Chihuahuan Desert Nature Park, the Arboretum at Flagstaff, the Arizona Bioscience
Industry Organization, and the University of Arizona’s Biosphere II. She has
served on several editorial boards for ecological research journals and on NSF
and other review panels, and has been elected twice to the governing board of
the Ecological Society of America (most
recently as Vice President for Public Affairs). Laura has been a member of the
Steering Committee for the Arizona Bioscience Roadmap, the Board of Directors
for the Northern Arizona Sustainable Economic Development Initiative, and the
Advisory Committee for the Economic Collaborative of Northern Arizona. Currently she is a member of the Board of
Trustees for The Nature Conservancy’s Arizona Chapter.
Blogs
Read Dr. Huenneke's guest blogs from Inside NAU, a weekly newsletter published by the Office of Public Affairs: