University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Office of the Provost.

The Management Survey of 1953 recommended that instructional and research units in the university, exclusive of Health Affairs, be grouped in a division for administrative purposes with a chief officer responsible to the chancellor. Such an organization, headed by a Dean of the Faculty, was recommended by the chancellor and approved by the president in the spring of 1954. It was not possible at that time to secure budgetary support for the new deanship, and a chairman of the division was designated for the academic year 1954-1955. Support was later authorized, and Corydon P. Spruill became the first Dean of the Faculty on 1 September 1955. By action of the General Faculty, the office of Dean of the Faculty was incorporated into the Instrument of University Government, which also provided that the Dean should chair the Committee on Instructional Personnel. The title of the position has changed several times over the years: from Dean of the Faculty to Vice Chancellor of the University, 1965-1966; Provost, 1966-1988; Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, 1988-1996; Provost, 1996-2001; and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, 2001- .

At the time of its creation, the Division of Academic Affairs consisted of the College of Arts and Sciences (composed of the Divisions of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences, which brought together in functional groups the separately organized departments of instruction, curricula and programs); the General College; the Graduate School; the Schools of Business Administration, Education, Journalism, Law, Library Science, and Social Work; the Summer School; the Library; the Extension Division; the Institutes of Fisheries Research, Government, and Latin American Studies along with the Institute for Research in Social Science; the Research Laboratories of Anthropology; and the University of North Carolina Press. Eventually some of these units moved to other administrative divisions while new academic departments and research institutes became part of the Division of Academic Affairs. Among the latter were the Center for the Study of the American South, the Black Cultural Center, the University Center for International Studies, the Ackland Art Museum, the Morehead Planetarium; the North Carolina Botanical Garden, the Mathematics and Science Education Network, the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Model Clinical Teaching Network, the Principals' Executive Program, and the Small Business and Technology Development Center. From 1985 to 1996, and again from 1998 to the present, the Office of Institutional Research also has reported to the Provost.

...