Doug Southard, PA and College Provost
The March issue of PAEA Networker has an article about PA educator Doug Southard, who is the provost at Jefferson College of Health Sciences in Roanoke, Va. According to the article, Southard is probably the only PA to have become a college provost.
Over the past decade or so, many PAs and PA educators have moved into positions as deans and assistant deans, a sign of the profession’s maturation, growth, and increasing acceptance in the academic world. One PA educator has gone a step further: Doug Southard is likely the only PA in the country who has attained the rank of provost, the chief academic officer of a college or university. Southard is provost at Jefferson College of Health Sciences in Roanoke, Virginia, a private college in the southwest corner of the state that educates nearly 1,000 students in about a dozen undergraduate health professions programs in nursing, occupational therapy, and, of course, PA studies. He was the founding director of the PA program there, in 1996; and after a hiatus in the private research sector, returned to academia in 2004 as dean for academic affairs and student services at Jefferson. In 2005 he was named provost.
Link