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John Coleman is provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Urbana-Champaign, where he is also a professor of political science. In that position, which he has held since July 2023, he serves as the chancellor’s chief strategic partner and as the university’s chief academic officer. Coleman oversees the university’s 15 colleges, a budget of over $3 billion, and capital projects planning. Enrollment has grown during each year of his term and now exceeds 61,000 students. During his term, Coleman has also expanded financial aid and grown the university’s tenure-stream faculty past 2,000 for the first time in 15 years. Additional areas of focus during his tenure have included the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence for higher education and for society, leveraging the university’s health ecosystem, and enhancing interdisciplinary research and education. He has initiated efforts to strengthen free expression and dialogue across difference, boost online education, advance fiscal responsibility, and revamp the university’s data and IT enterprises.

Coleman served on the political science faculty of UW–Madison for 22 years. While department chair from 2007-2014, he rebuilt faculty numbers and led reform efforts to prioritize research excellence and enhance departmental rankings. He significantly grew the department’s alumni connections and its philanthropic support and bolstered the Wisconsin Idea through an enhanced focus on engaging more fully with the state. On the undergraduate level, he expanded career readiness services and opportunities for internships, research, and other applied learning experiences. Prior to becoming chair, he headed the modernization of the department’s graduate education to improve student outcomes. At Wisconsin, he held the Glenn B. and Cleone Orr Hawkins Professorship and a Jeffrey and Susanne Lyons Family Faculty Fellowship. He received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award and the Dean’s Service Award.

From 2014 to 2023, Coleman was dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, the largest college at the university. During his tenure, the college’s graduation and retention rates reached all-time highs, research funding was expanded, interdisciplinary degree programs were developed with five colleges, and a major fundraising campaign closed over target. Public engagement was enhanced through the opening of the Liberal Arts Engagement Hub, a location for university members and community partners to work on projects of shared interest. Coleman also emphasized student success, launching a nationally-awarded undergraduate career readiness program, career advising for graduate students, and increased scholarship support.

A scholar of American politics, Coleman is the author or editor of seven books and of articles in leading journals. His research centers on political parties, elections, campaign finance, legislative-executive relations, and the intersection of politics and economics, and he has served as president of the American Political Science Association’s section on Political Organizations and Parties. Prior to his time in Wisconsin, Coleman served on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin and was a research associate at Harvard Business School. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in government and history from Clark University.