Mun Choi, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, speaks at UConn’s town hall meeting in Augustus Storrs Hall on Tues., April 12, 2016. Choi has just been chosen to be president of Mizzou.
The University of Connecticut’s Provost Mun Y. Choi was selected to take over as president of the University of Missouri system, according to a report by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The University of Missouri received national attention last year when previous president Timothy Wolfe resigned in November of 2015, following student and faculty protests claiming Wolfe had failed to take action against multiple instances of racism on campus.
Choi has served as provost of UConn since December 2012, and prior to that joined UConn as Dean of Engineering and a professor of Mechanical Engineering in 2008. He received his doctorate from Princeton in 1992.
Last year’s controversy at Mizzou was the backdrop of several high-profile news stories:
Graduate student Jonathan Butler started a hunger strike on Nov. 2 insisting that Wolfe resign.
Additional controversy came when a student photographer, Tim Tai, was restricted from accessing the public demonstration area by protesters.
Communications professor Melissa Click, spoke of forcibly removing another reporter (Mark Schierbecker) while demonstrating with the students. Click was recorded on film saying: “Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here.”
Since Wolfe resigned, former Deputy Chancellor Mike Middleton has been serving as interim president of Mizzou.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports (from “multiple sources”) that details of Choi’s hiring were finalized by the Missouri Board of Curators in their executive session Monday morning and that Choi will be named as the new president at a ceremony Wednesday morning.
UConn spokesperson Stephanie Reitz declined to comment on this topic.
Chris McDermott is the news editor for The Daily Campus. He can be reached via email at christopher.mcdermott@uconn.edu.