Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs & Provost

Meet Provost Messina

Dr. Joseph P. Messina serves as Louisiana State University’s (LSU) Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs & Provost and the Chief Academic Officer for the research enterprise, which includes the flagship campus in Baton Rouge, the LSU Agricultural Center, LSU Health New Orleans, LSU Health Shreveport, and Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
As Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs & Provost, Dr. Messina oversees the flagship university’s academic programs, faculty affairs, enrollment management, and student success initiatives in support of LSU's mission as a leading public research university. As Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Messina works closely with Chancellor James T. Dalton and the Senior Vice Chancellors to advance a unified academic and research vision across the statewide research enterprise.

 Prior to joining LSU, Dr. Messina served for seven years as Dean of the J. Frank Barefield Jr. College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alabama. As dean of Alabama's largest college, he led 22 academic departments and multiple research centers comprising more than 1,000 faculty and staff. During his tenure, the college strengthened its academic programs, expanded research and student success initiatives, completed a successful reaffirmation of accreditation, and secured transformational philanthropic investments that advanced teaching, the performing arts, and the research mission.

Before joining the University of Alabama, Dr. Messina spent nearly two decades at Michigan State University, where he held a series of leadership positions, including Assistant Vice President for Research and Innovation, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, Associate Dean for Research, and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies. His administrative experience includes faculty affairs, research administration, graduate education, strategic planning, and interdisciplinary academic initiatives at one of the nation's leading public research universities.

A nationally recognized scholar and professor of geography, Messina’s work spans land change science, population-environment geography, medical geography, geographic information science, remote sensing, and spatial analysis. He has authored more than 140 scholarly publications and developed an international research portfolio supported by agencies and organizations, including NASA, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.