Office of the Provost Transition
March 13, 2026
Dear Brandeis community,
I am writing to announce that Provost and Executive Vice President Carol Fierke, PhD ’84, who has served Brandeis in that role and as a Professor of Biochemistry since 2021, will conclude her term as Provost at the end of the 2025-26 academic year as part of a planned transition. She will maintain her faculty appointment at Brandeis.
Linda Bui, Founding Dean of the School of Business and Economics, will assume the role of Interim Provost, effective July 1.
I want to thank Carol for her commitment and leadership, especially over the last year during the rollout of the Brandeis Plan to Reinvent the Liberal Arts. Carol oversaw the strategic restructuring of the academic structure in collaboration with the faculty and recruiting new Vice Provosts for Graduate and Undergraduate education. She also helped implement strategic initiatives, including a new Center for Community Engagement (Compact), building a new undergraduate residence hall, initiating an undergraduate Engineering program and coordinating the Jewish Studies Consortium and hiring the Lavine Director.
During her tenure she was instrumental in leading the university’s transition back to campus following the COVID pandemic and supported the successful transition between presidents in 2024. She also supported the development and implementation of Brandeis Online as a university-wide collaboration to offer asynchronous certificates and master’s programs, completed the five year NECHE accreditation review and initiated the 10 year NECHE accreditation review, which will take place over the next 12 months. Of additional note, in 2021 she was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was named one of 25 outstanding leaders by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.
Carol has provided wise counsel during our time together, and I appreciate her candid and thoughtful consultation as we restructured our academic enterprise.
I am also very pleased that Linda Bui has agreed to fill the role of Interim Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs.
Linda previously served as senior associate provost for assessment and accreditation in the Office of the Provost at Brandeis, a role that provided her a university-wide perspective. She joined the faculty of the Department of Economics in 2004, and from 2018 to 2024, she was the International Business School’s senior associate dean and associate dean of academic programs where she supported innovation at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. She also served as program director of the School’s PhD in International Economics and Finance. An environmental economist who studies environmental and health policy, her work has had an important impact on the development of US regulatory policy on air pollution and childhood lead poisoning.
She received a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and previously taught at Boston University, the University of Michigan, MIT and Sloan School of Management.
I thank Carol for her commitment and dedication to Brandeis over the last several years and appreciate Linda’s willingness to step into this critical role.
Sincerely,
Arthur Levine
President