The University of San Francisco Names Dr. Eileen Chia-Ching Fung Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs
SAN FRANCISCO (March 7, 2024) – The University of San Francisco (USF) has announced that accomplished leader, professor and scholar Dr. Eileen Chia-Ching Fung has been appointed to the role of Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, effective March 6, 2024. Dr. Fung most recently held the position of Interim Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs since June 2023.
“In her interim role as our provost, Eileen has demonstrated her collaborative leadership, compelling academic vision, and depth of experience at USF, honed over 25 years of leading and serving our community in many roles across the university,” stated USF President Paul J. Fitzgerald, S.J. “Her collaborative style, clear communication, and advocacy for an equitable, mission-driven, community-engaged, and student-centered education all support the foundational principles of a Jesuit education.”
As USF’s chief academic officer, Provost Fung is responsible for the university’s five schools, libraries, academic affairs, enrollment management, online programs, international relations, and diversity and community outreach for the university’s students, faculty and staff.
“I’m excited to begin this new chapter in my career at USF,” said Provost Fung. “USF provides students with the skills to thrive in the 21st century, readies them for careers they enjoy, prepares them to engage meaningfully with the world, and nurtures the curious mindsets of lifelong learners. I’m inspired every day by the resilience and care in our campus community and all the big and small ways we lift up one another in support of our shared mission.”
As a first-generation college student from a Chinese immigrant family, Provost Fung arrived at USF in 1997 upon being awarded the James Irvine Dissertation Fellowship, and was hired as a full-time faculty member in the Department of English in 1998. She served as chair of the English department and director of the Asian American Pacific Studies Program before her appointment as associate dean of arts and humanities at the university's College of Arts and Sciences in 2010. She became senior associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 2019, interim dean in 2021, and dean in 2022.
Provost Fung conceptualized and founded USF’s Honors College with a $15 million endowment gift from Gordon Getty ’56, and served as its founder and associate dean, and then dean. She was instrumental in securing a $1.5 million gift from Richard Blum to establish the Privett Global Honors Scholars Program to support faculty development of global educational curricula and provide funding for student immersion and study abroad opportunities. She currently serves as one of the principal investigators of a multi-year, $1.5 million Andrew W. Mellon grant to support the matriculation of underrepresented and underserved students from the Foothill-De Anza Community College District to USF. She helped USF to become a Minority Serving Institution and to receive its first Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions grant, a multi-year grant of $1.4 million in 2023.
After receiving a BA in English literature with a minor in Asian American studies from UCLA, Provost Fung earned a PhD in medieval English literature — with specializations in feminist and post-colonial theories and ethnic American literature — from UC Santa Barbara. Her research interests lie in examining the intersection of literature and identity through cultural practices in the genres of travel and food narratives.
About the University of San Francisco
The University of San Francisco is a private, Jesuit Catholic university that reflects the diversity, optimism, and opportunities of the city that surrounds it. USF offers more than 230 undergraduate, graduate, professional, and certificate programs in the arts and sciences, business, law, education, and nursing and health professions. At USF, each course is an intimate learning community in which top professors encourage students to turn learning into positive action, so the students graduate equipped to do well in the world — and inspired to change it for the better. For more information, visit usfca.edu.
