Portrait of executive financial director standing at office while looking at camera and smiling.

Dr. Michael F. Anderson has been appointed interim provost and vice president for academic and student affairs for Bemidji State University and Northwest Technical College.

“I am pleased that Dr. Anderson has accepted the offer to become our interim provost,” said Dr. Faith Hensrud, BSU/NTC president-elect. “He has outstanding experience and we’re excited that he will be joining us here at Bemidji State.”

Anderson has been vice president for academic affairs at Wayne State College in Wayne, Neb., since 2012. There, he supervises four deans, 130 full-time faculty members, the library, continuing education and institutional data with a total academic budget of $17 million. He also is responsible for personnel supervision and evaluations, curriculum and instruction, program development, accreditation and assessment, general education, extended campus, and student retention and completion. During his tenure, Wayne State’s first-year retention rates have improved by 10 percent, and the college has received 10-year accreditation from HLC. He also has provided guidance for four academic-program accreditations and designed a competency-based mathematics lab for underprepared students.

“I cannot wait to begin working with the faculty, staff, and students at Bemidji State University,” Anderson said. “I have confidence that I can assist Dr. Faith Hensrud with her transition to BSU and bring new ideas to campus.”

Before joining the administration at Wayne State, Anderson was dean of education and counseling at New Mexico Highlands University; director of the School of Education and Counseling at the University of Wisconsin Platteville; director of education and kinesiology at what is now Clarke University; an instructional consultant at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; and an assistant professor of education at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Before beginning his career in higher education, Anderson was a public school teacher and coach at Lincoln East High School in Lincoln, Neb.

Anderson earned his bachelor’s, masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Anderson’s duties begin July 5. He will succeed Dr. Martin Tadlock, who in May was named regional vice chancellor of academic affairs at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

Bemidji State University, located in northern Minnesota’s lake district, occupies a wooded campus along the shore of Lake Bemidji. Enrolling nearly 5,000 students, Bemidji State offers more than 80 undergraduate majors and 11 graduate degrees encompassing arts, sciences and select professional programs. BSU is a member of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system and has a faculty and staff of more than 550. University signature themes include environmental stewardship, civic engagement and global and multi-cultural understanding.

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