KENT: Kent State’s new provost has yet to find a house or set up his office, but he already has asked about the best Brazilian restaurants in Northeast Ohio.
Todd Diacon (pronounced DIKE-on) will bring his love of all things Brazilian with him when he becomes the No. 2 official at the university June 1.
He was introduced Monday at a media conference wearing a gold and blue striped tie, the victor in a four-way race to oversee academics at Kent.
“I want to make an outstanding university even better,” Diacon, 53, told a room of 100 attendees.
Diacon is deputy chancellor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a public institution with 27,500 students and in-state tuition about 25 percent higher than Kent State’s $10,000.
He oversees town-gown relations, university relations with the state legislature and created the UMass Community College Connection to enroll graduates of two-year institutions.
He joined UMass-Amherst at the request of Chancellor Robert Holub in 2010. The two had worked together at the University of Tennessee, where Diacon held jobs that included assistant provost and head of the history department.
When Holub’s contract at UMass was not renewed — he later agreed to step down — Diacon began to interview for another job. He currently earns $231,000.
Last fall, he was a finalist for provost at Bowling Green State University and for the presidency at Emporia State University in his home state of Kansas.
At Kent State he will make $275,000 a year, slightly less than the $288,000 paid to Robert Frank, who is leaving the provost’s post to become president of his alma mater, the University of New Mexico. KSU officials said a complete contract is being developed for Diacon.
Diacon said he developed a love of history while earning a bachelor’s degree at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kan. That grew into master’s and doctoral degrees in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
His specialty became Brazil, which he has visited every year, sometimes for months at a time, for decades. He said he is fluent in Portuguese and conversant in Spanish.
Along the way, he has written two books about Brazil that have been published by the academic press: Stringing Together a Nation in 2009 about the construction of the first telegraph line over the Amazon, and Construction of a Modern Brazil in 2004.
He is married to a native of Brazil, Moema Furtado, a contemporary sculptress and artist he met while in graduate school. She is director of education and engagement at the UMass-Amherst Fine Arts Center.
His Facebook page lists his favorite quotation as the old Brazilian saying: “For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the rules.”
Carol Biliczky can be reached at 330-996-3729 or cbiliczky@thebeaconjournal.com.