Meet Provost Ann Stevens

CU Boulder Provost Ann Stevens joined CU Boulder on July 15, 2025. CU Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz announced her appointment on May 29, following a national search. She succeeds Provost Russell Moore, who retired following nearly 15 years of service as provost. 

Stevens came to CU Boulder from the University of Texas at Austin, where she served as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and professor of economics, and held the David Bruton, Jr. Regents Chair in Liberal Arts. Her research interests include the incidence and long-term effects of job loss, connections between economic shocks and health, and poverty and safety-net dynamics. Her research has been supported by numerous grants from foundations and federal agencies and is widely cited. 

She received her doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan and her undergraduate degree in economics and political science from American University. She also served as a faculty member and in leadership roles at the University of California, Davis. 

The Provost’s Post sat down with Stevens to learn more about her background, values and reasons for becoming provost at CU Boulder. 

First, welcome to CU Boulder, Provost Stevens. Let’s start with your background, as you’ll be the first economist provost at CU Boulder. What launched your career in academia and in economics? 

I always gravitated towards research that benefits the public good, specifically, applied work that directly informs policy. In the case of economics, it was a discipline that would help ensure that as a society we do smart things in our policies instead of being driven solely by politics and tradition. With labor economics, I liked the continual question of “how can we live in a capitalist economy and still take care of people?” The challenge of how we answer that question and how much the details matter really appealed to me. Then there are the pure nerdy parts of how we can do good things for the economy. It’s a great discipline. 

What made you want to be an administrator? 

I started thinking about becoming an administrator right after the great recession, around 2008. I was at UC Davis, and I saw leaders who understood the academic enterprise at the ground level and were willing to learn new skills and contribute to the institution, and not just to their own careers. I really admired that. I had just received a grant to create an interdisciplinary center, and I was getting to know people in law, medicine, psychology, and I became curious about how different parts of the university worked. And I quickly became excited to move beyond my academic discipline of economics—though making great use of some of its best principles—to serve the university beyond just through my discipline alone. And I continued that arc at UT-Austin. 

What made CU Boulder attractive to you? 

I came up through the ranks of three great public universities—Michigan, Texas and the University of California System—so I am biased toward great research universities because their comprehensive approach means they can solve really big problems and serve students in a variety of ways. I knew of CU Boulder’s general reputation, and I was looking for an opportunity at a peer university—but not just any peer. I was hoping for a really innovative place. 

And then when I visited the campus for my interviews and community meetings, it was completely energizing. What I learned about our amazing faculty and staff—the culture of curiosity, the sheer productivity, the commitment to the balance of research, scholarship and creative work with teaching and service—just convinced me that this is where I wanted to be. I also saw and admired long periods of stable leadership that had allowed the institution to do some critical long-term thinking.

CU Boulder is a place where people are doing innovative things within a core mission. We don’t have to come up with a gimmicky story about what we do—people here are just living the mission of educating a lot of students at a reasonable cost and supporting faculty who produce high impact scholarship. The institutional values and commitment to the core mission here are as solid as I’ve ever seen. 

What kind of leader are you, and what can people expect of you as provost? 

I come from a background that means I’m still shocked that I’m a tenured professor, much less leading the academic operation of a major university. I was raised in a middle-class family around Corpus Christi, Texas, and even to this day I’m not sure my mom understands what I do. So I really respect and value the different people I interact with, and I try to listen closely to people as contributors. I don’t think hierarchically—research universities can be very hierarchical—but I find what they offer is a great opportunity to listen to people from all backgrounds and then work with them to solve big problems while providing an amazing experience for students. I think a lot about the balance between a big vision and attending to the details of making that vision a reality. That’s the main challenge in being provost, and I love the interplay of those two. 

What’s the biggest challenge you and CU Boulder’s academic mission are facing? 

This is a difficult time for higher ed and for CU Boulder. But I think in a few short years there is going to be a great reshuffling in higher education, and I’m betting on public universities and on CU Boulder to emerge from that even stronger than we are. We’ve got a diverse research portfolio and a comprehensive set of educational programs; we’re a local and national destination for students and for faculty who want what we have to offer—like our historic commitment to interdisciplinary research and teaching. We’ve got resource and budget challenges like all public universities do. But a decade from now, I think we can be contributing even more as a public institution to the public good. We’re well-positioned to do so. We have a lot of work to do and we need to do that work together. But we have a long tradition here of doing that, and that makes me optimistic and excited about CU Boulder’s future, and how I can help us get there.