Provost Office

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Eileen Fung

Interim Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs
University of San Francisco

Eileen Chia-Ching Fung assumed the role of interim provost and vice president of Academic Affairs in June 2023, after dedicating more than 20 years of service to USF, including more than 10 years in the dean’s office of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Born to Chinese immigrants who fled the mainland after World War II, Interim Provost Fung’s family immigrated to Pennsylvania from Taiwan in the 1970s. She became its first member to graduate from college when she earned a BA in English literature, with a minor in Asian American studies,  from UCLA, and she went on to earn a PhD in medieval English literature — with specializations in feminist and post-colonial theories and ethnic American literature — from UC Santa Barbara.  

Interim Provost Fung was awarded the James Irvine Dissertation Fellowship at USF in 1997, and hired as a full-time faculty member in the Department of English in 1998. She served as chair of the English department and director of the Asian American Pacific Studies Program before her appointment as associate dean of arts and humanities in 2010. She became senior associate dean in 2019 and interim dean in 2021. In her leadership roles, she advocated for an equitable, mission-driven, community-engaged, and student-centered education.

I am committed to supporting a Jesuit liberal arts education that is student centered and globally engaged, innovative and relevant, mission driven and humanizing — one that seeks justice on our campus, in our city, and in society.”

In 2018, that advocacy resulted in Interim Provost Fung securing the endowment for the USF Honors College, which she founded and for which she served as associate dean. She was instrumental in establishing the Privett Global Honors Scholars Program within the Honors College, which supports faculty development of global educational curriculum and provides funding for student immersion and study abroad opportunities. She is also one of the principal investigators of a multi-year, $680,000 Andrew W. Mellon grant to support matriculation of underrepresented and underserved students from the Foothill-De Anza Community College District to USF.