Belinda Rodgers McCarthy is Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs at Missouri State University, and Chancellor of the MSU Mountain Grove Campus. Missouri State University is a comprehensive, multicampus educational system operating under a single Board of Governors, with a statewide mission in public affairs.  The campus enrolls more than 22,000 students, offering baccalaureate through doctoral degrees. Since her arrival, she has worked with colleagues to establish the university’s first provost’s office, reorganizing enrollment management services and establishing a wide array of student success programs, which are housed in a new 10,000 square foot Learning Commons.  A Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning has also been developed, with extensive pedagogical support for online and technology enhanced instruction.

She promoted significant faculty salary increases and aggressive faculty recruiting. Under her leadership, research support has been enhanced and external funding has increased significantly.  Academic programs began a period of benchmarking and external review of programs, developing dashboards and other management tools to enhance quality and efficiency. Working with internal and external constituencies, she has fostered the maturing of the university’s public affairs mission, with particular focus on diversity and international initiatives.  

Previously, Dr. McCarthy served as Dean of the College of Health and Public Affairs at the University of Central Florida.  As the founding dean of the college, she established many new programs, including masters’ and doctoral programs in all disciplines, and managed significant enrollment growth.  She worked to develop alumni organizations for all programs and established a college wide marking and communications plan; both annual giving and major gifts to college programs were increased.  The college established extensive partnerships with community colleges and other universities, including BS to professional programs in Medicine and Law.   Scholarship and external funding was greatly enhanced, leading to the establishment of four institutional and statewide research centers.

Dr. McCarthy began her administrative career at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she progressed through the ranks to full professor before serving as Associate Dean and later Interim Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She also established and directed the Women’s Studies Program at UAB, receiving the Founder’s Award for her leadership of the program in 1989. 

She attended the State University of New York at Albany as a Herbert Lehman Fellow, receiving her Ph.D. in 1978.  She completed her graduate work in five years, two of them while serving as Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of New Haven. She also taught for two years at the University of North Caroline at Charlotte.

She is the editor or author of five books and is the author or co-author of more than three dozen scholarly articles, book chapters, and monographs.  She is co-author of several popular textbooks, including Justice, Crime and Ethics and Community Based Corrections. 

Dr. McCarthy has been an active member of professional and community organizations and has served on numerous boards and advisory councils.  She has participated in ACE, AASCU and CIC Leadership programs, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Grants Resource Center.  She has been recognized as Educator of the Year by the Southern Criminal Justice Association and was named Alumnus of the Year by the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs.  She has been honored by the University of Central Florida for her efforts to promote diversity; the Orlando Business Journal recognized her for Innovations in Education.