University of Michigan. Provost and Executive Vice-President for Academic Affairs.

As of 1995 the office represented by this record group is officially titled the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs. Previous titles of the office were: Vice Presidents for Academic Affairs and Provost, 1983-1995; Vice President for Academic Affairs, 1962-1983; and Provost, 1938-1962.

The origins of this office date back to 1938, during President Ruthven's administration, when the position of provost was created by a bylaw of the Board of Regents to "aid the President by performing such of the President's functions as shall from time to time be delegated by him or by the Board of Regents" (Regents' Proceedings, March 1938, p. 505). E. Blythe Stason, the dean of the Law School who had already been performing many of these functions, was appointed the first provost. Stason resigned as provost in November 1944 to devote his attentions to the leadership of the Law School, and James P. Adams, vice president of Brown University and former University of Michigan economics professor, assumed the post of provost and professor of economics in January 1945. At the Regents' meeting of January 1945 the bylaw establishing the provost's position was amended to include the statement that the provost "shall be the chief executive officer of the University next to the President" (Regents' Bylaw 2.02). Adams remained the provost until his resignation in July 1951. A successor to Adams was not named, and the responsibilities of the provost were absorbed by the newly created vice president and dean of faculties, Marvin Niehuss.

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