At the end of 2024, Chancellor Haefer announced that former Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Mary Clark would be stepping down from her position in the summer. On June 9, the DU community learned that Elizabeth Loboa would be appointed as her successor. 

Provost Loboa attended Modesto Community College in California before she transferred to study mechanical engineering at the University of California, Davis. She began doing research in a lab as an undergraduate student, which sparked an interest in academia.

“That’s where I ended up starting to think more about going further in higher education,” Loboa said. 

She earned her master’s and Ph.D. at Stanford University before joining the Lampe Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering — a collaboration between NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill — as an assistant professor.

As the first external hire to join the recently created department, Provost Loboa had the opportunity to help shape its direction.

“Because the department was so newly formed, I got to do more of the strategy… and I ended up being the associate chair of the department, as well as a full professor there,” Loboa said. 

In 2015, she left North Carolina to become dean of the University of Missouri College of Engineering.

“I was very nervous about going, because I had a little bit of imposter syndrome,” Loboa said. 

At the time, there were only 48 female deans of colleges of engineering in the country. Women made up just 12 percent of the U.S. engineering workforce. For Loboa, the role was a chance to bridge the gap in representation.

“We needed more role models,” Loboa said.

Just as she began her tenure at the University of Missouri, protests erupted over how the school’s administration handled racism on campus. The demonstrations grew to include a hunger strike and a boycott by the football team, attracting national attention and resulting in the resignation of several administrators. 

Despite this, Loboa chose to stay, remaining in Missouri for nearly five years while the school faced both financial repercussions and leadership instability. 

“I learned a lot about crisis communications and… helping people understand why decisions are made,” Loboa said.

These are lessons she hopes to bring to the University of Denver, which is facing its own challenges, such as faculty distrust in administrative leadership, a decrease in student enrollment and significant budget cuts. 

“I believe in collaborative, transparent, data-informed decision-making,” Loboa said. “We’re doing the right thing, even if it’s the hard thing.” 

When asked how she plans to address rebuilding trust between the administration and the campus community, Provost Loboa says her approach is founded in her values of transparency and integrity. 

“I’m spending a lot of time in every college and school just really getting to know everybody,” Loboa explained.

She attends listening and learning tours around campus, sends a weekly newsletter to faculty and staff and plans to attend Faculty Senate meetings to engage with faculty and answer their questions. 

“Not every decision is going to be one that makes everybody happy, but I will do everything in my power to make sure that everyone understands why the decisions are being made,” said Loboa.

Loboa was drawn to DU because of programs like the 4D Experience, which she says demonstrate the university’s investment in students’ full academic and personal development. 

“I wanted to be at a place that really was about taking care of the students,” Loboa said. “Having kids still in college myself, what really appealed to me here was… the holistic approach to educating students and helping them succeed.” 

Her first six weeks on campus have only made her more certain that she made the right choice. Spending time in the community has been especially meaningful for Loboa, a mother of five, who jokes that she wears both a “provost hat” and a “mom hat” in her role. 

“There is a culture of care and compassion here that is just palpable,” she said. “Everyone really cares about each other and we all really love the university.”

As Provost, Loboa hopes to highlight the strengths of the university and its community members and see them recognized nationally.

“DU has incredible programs, there’s an incredible community that puts our students on such a path of success, and I want that to be more known,” Loboa said.