Office of the President

Neil Theobald

(July 2019- July 2020)

Before his appointment to the university’s top leadership post by the UW Board of Trustees, Theobald served as UW’s vice president for finance and administration.

His extensive career in higher education administration has included multiple roles at Indiana University, where he was a tenured professor for two decades and served in a number of administrative positions -- as senior vice president and chief financial officer (2007-2012), senior vice chancellor (2002-07), and director of the Indiana Education Policy Center (1993-2002).

From 2012-16, he was the president of Temple University, during which time the university improved its U.S. News and World Report ranking 17 places; increased annual research funding by 55 percent to over $250 million per year, which led the Carnegie Foundation to upgrade Temple to its highest research activity classification (R1); and doubled annual fundraising from $39 million to $84 million. In 2014, the Philadelphia Business Journal named Theobald its Most Admired Education CEO.

Prior to earning his PhD at the University of Washington in 1989, Dr. Theobald was a high school math teacher and baseball coach in Seattle. Dr. Theobald is a past-president of the Association for Education Finance and Policy, winning the Association's Jean Flanigan Award for the outstanding dissertation in the study of educational finance in 1990. In 1995, the University Council for Educational Administration presented Dr. Theobald with the Jack A. Culbertson Award as the professor who, in the first seven years of his or her career, made the most outstanding contribution to the profession.

He and his wife, Sheona, have 3 grown children and 4 grandchildren. 

Theobald is currently serving the University of Wyoming as Senior Vice President of Administration.