Professor
Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs and Provost

Janet Woodruff-Borden, Ph.D., has been named senior vice president of Academic Affairs and provost at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She leads UAB’s education mission as the chief academic officer and plays a crucial role in supporting the university’s mission and the updated strategic plan, Forging Ahead.

Woodruff-Borden joined UAB from the University of Oregon, where she most recently served as interim provost and executive vice president for 15 months. There she led initiatives on three key fronts: interdisciplinary initiatives focused on the environment, child and adolescent behavioral health, and sport and wellness; student success initiatives to address equity gaps; and inclusive excellence across the academic portfolio. Woodruff-Borden also helped in the development and implementation of UO’s Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health, which included a $425 million private gift.

In addition to Woodruff-Borden’s leadership roles, she is a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology, and she studies the developmental psychopathology of anxiety. She has extensive published research in the field, and she has mentored 35 doctoral and hundreds of undergraduate students. Woodruff-Borden said their success is core to her identity as a faculty member and will continue to inform her work at UAB as provost.

Woodruff-Borden received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Wake Forest University and her master’s and doctorate degrees from Virginia Tech. She also completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in clinical psychology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School. Woodruff-Borden held academic appointments in her 28 years at the University of Louisville, including assistant, associate, and full professorships in psychological and brain sciences.