Leading the Charge

University provosts are institutions’ chief academic officers, guiding educational offerings for students and development and hiring efforts for faculty. As the second-highest level of leadership at a university, the people appointed to these positions — including UCF’s Michael D. Johnson — are experts in building a strategic vision and determining how to achieve it.

While Johnson — who started at UCF 35 years ago as an assistant professor supporting the new physics doctoral program — certainly has the wisdom and keen foresight of a senior academic administrator, he considers himself a student and servant to UCF. That service will be complete this summer when he retires.

“I’ve had this remarkable set of opportunities to do things that are really interesting. And I’ve had almost no opportunity to get bored,” says Johnson, who was dean of the College of Sciences from 2011 to 2020. “I’ve been learning new things all the time and, I hope, doing good things for the university. I certainly tried.”

While Johnson spends a lot of time meeting with people across the university and speaking at various events, the self-proclaimed introvert spends even more time listening to faculty, chairs and deans about where UCF should be heading and how he can help remove hurdles to get there.

“People expect us to help students get good first jobs out of college and have good careers. That’s our duty and it’s part of our mission. But it’s not all of our mission,” he says. “A lot of what I’ve done is thinking about how to invest money that the state has generously invested in UCF, which ultimately means who should we hire. They’ve invested with us explicitly to help strengthen engineering and technology because of their significance to the state of Florida.”

“And when we carry out our obligation to support the public good, and we do support the public good, it becomes opportunities for us to become great,” he says.

“I’ve seen this university develop from a regional institution into something that’s really playing on a high level across all of higher education.” — Michael D. Johnson, provost

Johnson has witnessed UCF’s evolution as Florida’s Premier Engineering and Technology University parallel the growth of related industries and partner companies, like Lockheed Martin and Electronic Arts, around Central Florida. While excellence in STEM continues to be a hallmark of UCF, he knows from a faculty and administrative level — and for the benefit of all students — that every discipline contributes to the strength of one another and Knight Nation as a whole.

“I believe taking advantage of the university’s technology focus, where it makes sense, will help each academic area leap past programs at other universities, and develop into something unique and excellent on the national landscape,” he says.

That level of impact and growing reputation, Johnson notes, is partially tied to UCF’s location in one of America’s most dynamic and economically robust cities, providing competitive advantages over older institutions across Florida and the nation. It’s part of the reason he came to UCF decades ago.

“Over the years we’ve harnessed growth to improve our quality and expand our mission,” Johnson says. “I’ve seen this university develop from a regional institution into something that’s really playing on a high level across all of higher education. UCF is becoming one of the best universities in the country. It’s just been an incredible trajectory.”