About the Provost

Robert S. DiPaola, M.D., serves as the provost and the co-executive vice president for health affairs at the University of Kentucky.

Dr. DiPaola is a first-generation college graduate and completed his medical degree at the University of Utah, an internal medicine residency at Duke University Medical Center and a fellowship in medical oncology-hematology at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Dr. DiPaola joined UK in 2016 as the dean of the College of Medicine, where he also held the role of vice president for clinical academic affairs in UK HealthCare. He created the college’s integrated strategic plan, COMMITS (College of Medicine Map to Impact by a Transdisciplinary Strategy). Under that plan, research funding doubled over five years and enrollment of medical students increased 50% through the creation of two new four-year campuses in Northern Kentucky and Bowling Green, Kentucky. 

In 2021, Dr. DiPaola served as acting provost, and he was named provost after a national search in 2022. As provost, Dr. DiPaola helped oversee the creation of UK’s strategic plan, the UK-PURPOSE, and UK’s reaffirmation for reaccreditation through the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). This process involved the development of UK’s new Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) — Transdisciplinary Educational approaches to advance Kentucky, or TEK, which helps prepare students to be leaders of tomorrow through a problem-solving approach using the collaboration of multiple disciplines. He also initiated the IMPACT (Institutional Multidisciplinary Paradigm to Advance Collaboration and Transformation) Award initiative to reenergize the ways research can be conducted collaboratively in UK’s colleges to advance Kentucky. As provost, Dr. DiPaola oversees 17 colleges, Libraries and the Graduate School, and he has developed educational and research programs that cross college and health care boundaries.

Dr. DiPaola also serves as the co-executive vice president for health affairs, a role he held on an acting basis starting in January 2023 and on a permanent basis since August 2023, after a national search. In this role, he has overseen and led a strategic refresh of the UK HealthCare system, focusing on advancing subspecialty care for communities in Kentucky and beyond, a comprehensive care strategy for both UK employees and community members in the state and leveraging UK’s academic health system with seven health-related colleges on one campus. During this time, there has been growth in clinical volume and newly acquired hospitals in Morehead and Ashland, Kentucky. In addition, the groundbreaking for the new Cancer and Advanced Ambulatory Building will increase access to Kentucky’s only NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center and ambulatory surgery space, and the groundbreaking of the Michael D. Rankin MD Health Education Building will help provide more health care education to meet Kentucky’s demands for a growing health care workforce.