Montana State University announced today that Elizabeth Burroughs, head of the Department of Mathematical Sciences, has been appointed to serve as interim provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.
Burroughs will take over from Robert Mokwa, who is retiring from the provost’s office to return to a faculty role in the Department of Civil Engineering. Burroughs will begin in her interim position June 1.
“It is a privilege to serve the faculty and students at Montana State University, where together we shape the future of our state and nation through our scholarship and engagement with the world,” Burroughs said. “I am proud to be part of our land-grant mission because I believe in higher education as a public good.”
“Dr. Burroughs is an outstanding leader who has shown a deep commitment to student success, academic excellence and service to our state, and I am excited that she was willing to take on this important role for our university,” said MSU President Brock Tessman. “I look forward to working closely together to advance the academic success of our students and the excellence of our faculty and instructors.
“I also want to express my gratitude to Bob Mokwa for his exceptional leadership as provost and for his commitment to supporting a smooth and thoughtful transition process in the months ahead.”
Burroughs joined the MSU mathematics faculty in 2007 and has served as department head since 2016. Prior to MSU, she was an assistant professor at Humboldt State University.
Burroughs’ research focuses on mathematical modeling — the process of using math to represent, analyze and make predictions about real-world situations — in school classrooms. She also researches the connections between undergraduate mathematics courses and high school courses and the preparation and professional development of math teachers.
Over the course of her academic career, she has authored or co-authored dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and has spoken or presented at a wide range of conferences and professional seminars. She was a lead author for the Mathematical Association of America’s “Instructional Practices Guide” in 2018 and a member of the writing team for the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators’ “Standards for Preparing Teachers of Mathematics” in 2017. More recently, she served as an editor for “An Aspirational Approach to the Mathematical Preparation of Teachers,” which was published in 2024.
Over her time at Montana State, Burroughs has served on committees focused on subjects such as degree persistence, orientation and conflict of interest. She has also chaired the Rocky Mountain section of the Mathematical Association of America and served on numerous other committees for the association and others.
She received the Women’s Faculty Caucus Distinguished Mentor Award in 2019, which recognizes outstanding mentoring of junior women faculty members, and was named the recipient of the College of Letters and Science Meritorious Research Award in 2018. She was a provost’s distinguished lecturer in 2017, and in 2014-15 was a Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom.
Her research has been funded several times by the National Science Foundation, including most recently a $1 million grant to conduct outreach and research community-based mathematical modeling practices with youth across Montana.
Burroughs earned her doctorate in mathematics from the University of New Mexico in 2003. She received a master’s in mathematics from UNM in 1999 and bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1992. Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked as a high school mathematics teacher in Atlanta, Georgia.
Burroughs was born and raised in Maine. She lives in Bozeman with her husband. They have three sons.