Hall says experience has prepared him for new job as USU president
Utah State University’s new president, Kermit L. Hall, has never been a university president before.
But he has worked for several universities across the country and has professional ties with former U.S. President Bill Clinton, and he said he is ready to be the “symbolic and political representative of USU.”
Hall comes to USU after spending a year as provost and vice chancellor for Academic Affairs at North Carolina State University. That job was the latest in a line of education-related work that sent him to Ohio State University, the University of Tulsa, the University of Florida and Vanderbilt University, among other institutions.
Hall has also been a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army as a military intelligence specialist and has several degrees, including a master’s from Yale University Law School and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
Hall was named USU’s 14th president in November following the resignation of former president George H. Emert. Hall began his administration at the start of this semester.
It was largely Hall’s education and scholarly experience that won him unanimous approval by the Utah Board of Regents, the body that chose him as Emert’s successor.
And though that experience has not yet included work as a university president, Hall said his experience as an administrator at two very good land-grant universities, NCSU and OSU, has been important preparation for this latest step in his professional life.
In addition to his experience as an educator, Hall’s reputation as a scholar has brought him national attention, including an appointment by Clinton to the five-person Assassination Records Review Board that studied former President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Hall said his academic interests include history, especially legal history – “as opposed to illegal history,” he joked. He has written and edited several books on the subject.
“I believe every university president should be, at heart, an educator,” he said.
He said the study of history especially has prepared him to be president because it helps him understand “how people act sympathetically.”
He does expect his job as president to be a little different from his past experiences, he said.
“When I was provost, I was able to go to the grocery store unmolested,” Hall said, referring to the near-celebrity status that often accompanies a job like university president.
Hall grew up in Akron, Ohio, and said the time he spent on a farm has helped him adjust to Logan. He learned about the rural Midwest, which he said may help him know what to expect in the rural West.
But this isn’t Hall’s first time in Utah.
He and his wife, Phyllis, have spent a lot of time in Salt Lake City doing scholarly research, especially at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Family History Library.