University of Tampa names Texas professor, administrator president

Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Texas Christian University, has been named the new president of the University of Tampa, replacing Ronald L. Vaughn.

The university’s board of trustees announced Dahlberg’s hiring Monday. She will take over June 1.

Dahlberg is stepping in for the departing Vaughn, who served as president for about 29 years.

Vaughn, who announced his retirement in March, has been credited with transforming the school just outside of downtown Tampa, expanding its physical form and its reputation as an educational facility.

Dahlberg comes to Tampa with a resume that includes stints in the classroom and as an administrator. According to a statement from the university announcing her hiring, she is a professor of computer science and engineering at TCU as well as being it chief academic officer.

Among her accomplishments at the Fort Worth university are overseeing the start-up of the Burnett School of Medicine, increasing minority faculty from 16% to 22% and serving as its chief fundraiser.

Before joining TCU in 2019, she was dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University in New York. There, according to the statement, she launched strategic and advancement plans focused on students’ experience, research and diversity and inclusion. She also created and led the college fundraising campaign which “meaningfully contributed” to Syracuse’s $1.5 billion Forever Orange capital campaign.

She was chosen for the job in Tampa after a nationwide search that included 160 candidates.

“Dr. Dahlberg’s passion for top-quality academics, her support of the student experience, and her administrative background makes her an excellent next president for UT,” Charlotte Baker, chair of the board of trustees, says in the statement. “She is absolutely the right person to lead UT after President Vaughn’s remarkable tenure.”

Vaughn came to the University of Tampa in August 1984 from Bradley University in Illinois at a time when it was made up of “a handful of old hand-me-down buildings.” He was hired as coordinator of the marketing department and holder of the Max H. Hollingsworth Endowed Chair of American Enterprise. Over the years, he also worked as director of the MBA program, dean of the college of business and graduate studies and as co-chief academic officer.

In January 1995, Vaughn took over as president of the university. This was a time when the University of Tampa “was languishing both financially and academically,” the university said when announcing his retirement last year.

During his tenure, annual operating revenue rose from $28 million in fall 1994 to $400 million in fall 2023; full-time enrollment grew to nearly 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students; and more than 70 on-campus projects were completed, or are near completion, totaling nearly $1 billion in value.

Dahlberg, in the statement, says “the prospect of building an even stronger and more impactful UT is a challenge that I embrace.”

“UT’s upward trajectory and transformation over the past three decades is an impressive and exciting story, and today the university is well positioned to become an elite, world-renowned university,” she says.