William F. Tate IV, the recently appointed president of Rutgers University and former president of Louisiana State University, has recently hired two of his former colleagues from LSU to join his new executive leadership team at Rutgers in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Kimberly Lewis is the new executive vice president and chief administrative officer. In this role, she will oversee all administrative activities at Rutgers, including institutional planning and operations, finance and administration, human resources, and information technology.
At LSU, Lewis also served as chief administrative officer, where she led all financial and administrative strategy. Before her most recent role, she was the chief executive officer for the state of Louisiana’s Department of Revenue, where she oversaw $10 billion in state tax revenue. Earlier, she was a practicing attorney with Jones Walker, LLP, where she specialized in economic development financing, state and local taxes, and incentives and government relations.
Lewis earned her juris doctorate from Louisiana State University.
Keena Arbuthnot is the new executive vice president for academic affairs and chief academic officer. Collaborating closely with Rutgers’ chancellors, provosts, and academic leaders, she will lead the university’s central academic and research policy and support functions. In addition to her administrative position, she will hold the faculty rank of distinguished professor.
Dr. Arbuthnot’s background includes extensive experience in educational measurement, applied statistics, and program evaluation. She most recently served as LSU’s vice president and chief data officer, dean of the Pinkie Gordon Lane Graduate School, and the Joan Pender McManus Distinguished Professor of Education. During her tenure there, she led efforts to modernize data infrastructure, developed artificial intelligence initiatives, aligned institutional data with strategic planning, and advanced the university’s doctoral and graduate degree programs. A widely published scholar in the field of education, she is the author of two books, including Filling in the Blanks: Understanding the Black-White Achievement Gap (Information Age Publishing, 2011).
Dr. Arbuthnot is a graduate of the University of Central Missouri, where she majored in mathematics. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
