DENTON, Texas — The University of North Texas has its sights set on a new president.
The University of North Texas System Board of Regents on Friday announced it has selected Harrison Keller, a state higher education official, as the sole finalist for the open president job.
Keller has been the commissioner and chief executive officer of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board since 2019. The agency works to carry out the state's strategic plan for higher education, as well as provide financial resources and tools for students.
Keller previously worked at the University of Texas at Austin, serving as Deputy to the President for Strategy and Policy. A native of the Texas Panhandle, Keller received his bachelors degree from the University of Notre Dame and got his master's and doctorate degrees from Georgetown.
At UNT, he'll succeed Neal Smatresk, who in February announced his plans to retire.
"Harrison Keller has spent his career committed to improving Texas higher education," UNT system Chancellor Michael R. Williams said in a statement. "His ability to lead, innovate, and partner both statewide and nationally has helped transform Texas higher education and will have an invaluable impact on UNT."
Smatresk announced his departure the same month that marked his 10th year as the head of UNT.
The university announcement at the time attributed Smatresk with guiding the school "into one of the largest Tier One research universities in the nation," growing enrollment from 36,000 students to nearly 47,000 students this past fall.
Smatresk was president at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) for four years before taking the UNT job. He had also been a chief academic officer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. But his academic roots are in North Texas, where he spent the first 25 years of his career at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA).
Smatresk's background is in biology, which he taught at UTA.
