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Andrew Armacost was chosen by the State Board of Higher Education to serve as the University of North Dakota’s 13th president on Dec. 3, 2019. He succeeds Mark Kennedy and Dr. Joshua Wynne, vice president for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine & Health Sciences at UND, who has served as interim president since Kennedy’s departure.

Armacost officially began his tenure as UND President on June 1, 2020.

Armacost recently completed his service as the Dean of the Faculty at the U.S. Air Force Academy. With more than 30 years on active duty and 20 years at the Academy, Armacost served in the rank of Brigadier General as the chief academic officer for this nationally ranked institution. He had direct responsibility for a faculty of 550, an academic program with 31 majors, and a student body of 4,300. He has been a champion of shared governance, academic freedom, inclusion, student growth, and applied learning and research. The Academy’s sponsored research program of more than $50 million annually made it the nation’s top-funded research program among undergraduate schools.

Prior to that role, Armacost served as the head of the Academy’s AACSB-accredited business management program, leading 40 faculty members and the Academy’s largest academic major. As a faculty member, he attained the academic rank of Professor, while sustaining a particular focus on developing and delivering applied learning opportunities for his students. His additional service to the Air Force has included assignments as the Chief Analyst at Air Force Space Command and as a program manager for systems supporting the intelligence community and the White House.

He has been widely recognized for his disciplinary expertise, academic leadership, and commitment to interdisciplinary learning. His lifetime of work, as both scholar and leader, earned him recent recognition as a Fellow of the Institution for Operations Research and the Management Sciences and lifetime achievement awards from both the Air Force and the Military Operations Research Society. In addition, he has received numerous teaching, research, and curriculum design awards at the institutional, national, and international levels.

Armacost has been an active member of state and local non-profit boards, including an inaugural member of the Colorado Innovation Network, and a founding advisor to the QUAD Initiative, a collaboration between local colleges to craft innovative solutions for community organizations in Colorado Springs, Colo. He has been similarly active in support of academic bodies, including service on the Board of Directors of the Military Operations Research Society and key editorial roles for professional journals.

As a former student-athlete and campus leader at Northwestern University, Armacost is a strong proponent of providing curricular and extra-curricular opportunities that promote growth and development in all students and the opportunity to leverage education for a better society. His degrees include a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern, and a Master of Science and Ph.D. in Operations Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.