About the President
Bernie Machen has led the University of Florida since he took office as the 11th president in January 2004.
During his tenure, Dr. Machen has expanded the university's research and scholarship endeavors, elevated its educational programs and increased access to students from a diversity of economic backgrounds - all while shepherding the university through an era of growing financial challenges.
Under President Machen's leadership, UF's annual research funding has soared to $678 million, including a $64 million grant for research on aging that is the largest in UF's history. He has presided over a major expansion of research facilities, including the 280,000-square-foot Cancer and Genetics Research Complex, the university's largest research building. Dr. Machen has also nurtured UF's technology commercialization enterprise, spearheading the development of a 25-acre innovation community within walking distance of UF's main campus.
He has hired more than 60 new professors through the "Jumpstart" initiative recruiting prominent scientists and promising junior faculty members during a period when most universities are thinning their faculty ranks. To support UF's 5,000 faculty members, he instituted the UF's Faculty Challenge and Faculty Now campaigns, raising $393 million for research and instructional assistance for faculty and graduate students.
Leadership in development is hallmark of President Machen's administration. He has presided over UF's Florida Tomorrow capital campaign, a five-year effort that has raised $1.31 billion toward a goal of $1.5 billion by 2012.
A longtime advocate for giving students from all walks of life the chance to attend college, Dr. Machen in 2005 pioneered the Florida Opportunity Scholars program, which pays tuition and room and board for students from families earning less than $40,000 annually and who are the first in their families to attend college. As of spring 2011, nearly 2,000 students - more than three quarters from minority populations - had attended UF as recipients of the scholarship. Dr. Machen also spearheaded a new alternative spring-summer academic schedule to begin in 2012 that will eventually open UF's doors to an additional 2,000 students.
Like other universities nationwide, UF has faced several years of declining state support. Dr. Machen has led Florida's 11 public universities' response to these declines, successfully advocating lawmakers to step up statewide tuition increases while allowing universities greater flexibility in setting their own tuition. Lawmakers have also funded a major UF research facility near Orlando, and in 2011 they relocated the Institute for the Commercialization of Public Research to UF's Florida Innovation Hub.
President Machen's administration has been marked by a strong commitment to environmental causes, including launching a university-wide sustainability campaign that is considered a model in public higher education. The UF Water Institute also was created during his time at UF, and a UF-owned and managed nature preserve was designated as a National Science Foundation-sponsored National Ecological Observatory Network, or NEON, site.
Prior to his arrival at UF, Dr. Machen served for six years as president of the University of Utah, where he is credited with expanding the health sciences program, stabilizing the university's finances and bolstering diversity.
From 1995 to 1997, he was provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Michigan, and from 1989 until 1995, he served as dean of Michigan's School of Dentistry. From 1983 to 1989, he was professor and associate dean at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill's School of Dentistry.
President Machen has held several prominent positions in national higher education leadership. Since 2005, he has served as a member of the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board. He chaired the Board of Directors of the National Campus Compact from 2002-2004 and served as a member of the board beginning in 1998. Additionally, beginning in 2010, he served as President of the Executive Committee of the Southeastern Conference and Chair of the Southeastern Conference Academic Consortium.
In 1987, Dr. Machen was president of the American Association of Dental Schools. From 1992 to 1995, he was a member of the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine Committee on Educating Dentists for the Future. He has a past appointment as chief of the Department of Extension Service at the U.S. Army Institute of Dental Research.
A native of Greenwood, Mississippi, Dr. Machen grew up in St. Louis. After attending Vanderbilt University for his undergraduate studies, he earned his doctor of dental surgery degree from St. Louis University and his master of science degree in pediatric dentistry and doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Iowa.
President Machen and his wife, Chris, a former neonatal intensive care nurse, live in Gainesville. They have two sons: Lee, an engineer at Intel in Portland; Michael, an attorney in Chicago; a daughter, Maggie, a veterinarian and resident in small animal cardiology at the University of Pennsylvania, and four grandchildren.
- Machen Biography - Full Version (PDF, 64 kB)
- Machen Biography - Short Version (PDF, 56 kB)