UA provost, police chief to step down, university officials announce

The University of Arizona provost and police chief are stepping down from their current roles, the university announced Monday.

The administrative moves come on the heels of an in-depth investigation into the shooting death of Hydrology professor Thomas Meixner last year.

Liesl Folks, the senior vice president and provost, is stepping down from her role to focus on establishing a new Center for Semiconducting Manufacturing at the university in Tucson.

Folks has a background in engineering and will remain a faculty member of Electrical and Computer Engineering, according to a university news release.

She will remain in her position through the spring semester when the university appoints an interim leader and begins the national search for a new provost.

The police chief at the University of Arizona Police Department, Paula Balafas, also stepped down from her role on Monday. The university said it will place Chris Olson, a commander of the Oro Valley Police Department, as interim UAPD chief.

Balafas’ decision to step down from her position occurred just three weeks after the university moved the Police Department’s line of reporting from Business Affairs to the Chief Safety Officer. Steve Patterson, a former FBI veteran, agreed to serve as interim chief safety officer while the university searches for someone to fill that role.

“This strategic change will further elevate safety operations across campus and enhance effective coordination of ongoing security measures, including those related to implementation of the previously detailed PAX Group recommendations,” UA President Robert Robbins said in the news release.

The recommendations are detailed in a report compiled by PAX Group LLC and suggest ways to improve campus safety and security. The report was compiled in the wake of the Oct. 5 shooting that left hydrology professor Meixner dead.

He was shot on campus by a former student who had been threatening him and others for over a year.

The shooting was “not unforeseeable,” according to the PAX report, which critiqued it among many other systemic issues, including the university’s Threat Assessment Management Team. The interdisciplinary group, founded in 2002, was supposed to establish if someone potentially posed a threat of violence to others on campus, but was found to not be operating in an effective manner.

The team was founded in 2002 after a former student shot three faculty from the University of Arizona College of Nursing and himself.

In another report compiled by the now-disbanded General Faculty Committee on University Safety For All, the committee found there to be a lack of trust in the university's Police Department, among other major issues.

The report revealed from interviews with university departments, community members and other faculty members and students that the department knew about the threats made against the professor by the former student, but little effective action was taken.

The university is also focusing on enhancing the threat assessment team’s ability to evaluate and act upon threatening reports, Robbins stated in his announcement on Monday. He recommended that people report threatening or concerning incidences through the Threat Assessment and Management Team website.

In a news conference last month, Robbins said TAMT recently established a charter, conducted threat assessment training and created an assessment process aimed to intake, review and mitigate incoming threats.

Robbins also announced a new Campus Safety Advisory Commission made up of faculty, staff and community members who will report to the chief safety officer. They will address the new safety and security measures implemented at the university.

Coverage of southern Arizona on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is funded by the nonprofit Report for America in association with The Republic.

Reach the reporter at sarah.lapidus@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: UA provost, police chief to step down, university officials announce