The University has selected a new provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, pending approval from the Board of Trustees.

Linda Katehi, dean of engineering at Purdue University, will take over the position April 1 if the board approves the appointment at its Jan. 19 meeting in Chicago.

“She is engaging, quick and has experience with strategic planning,” Chancellor Richard Herman told the University of Illinois News Bureau in December. “She has accomplished much in her time at Purdue and has a great deal of support there, as well as from those in the national community. We are enormously excited that she will be joining us in a leadership role.”

According to the University Web site, the provost and vice chancellor for student affairs are the main academic and budgetary officers at the University. All deans and heads of academic units report to the provost.

A native of Greece, Katehi earned a diploma in mechanical and electrical engineering at the National Technical University of Athens in 1977. After immigrating to the U.S., she earned a master’s and a doctorate in electrical engineering at UCLA.

Since becoming dean of engineering at Purdue in 2002, Katehi has worked toward making it one of the top engineering programs in the country. Since 2002, research activity in the College of Engineering at Purdue has increased 15 percent annually, according to its Web site.

Prior to her appointment at Purdue, Katehi had been a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan since 1984.

She was named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1995. In 2004, she was given the Leading Light Award for Women in High Tech by the State of Indiana.