USF St. Petersburg Regional Chancellor Christian Hardigree has been named the new president of Texas A&M University-Victoria.
Hardigree, 55, has led the University of South Florida’s satellite St. Petersburg campus since July 2022. Her final day on the job will be Nov. 3.
In a statement to the USF St. Petersburg campus announcing her departure, Hardigree says serving as Regional Chancellor has been “one of the greatest honors of my career.”
“This is an extraordinary place – one where people care about each other, lift each other up and, most importantly, always put our students first,” Hardigree’s statement says. “The passion I have witnessed has been inspiring, and it is because of you that this campus continues its amazing upward trajectory.”
Under Hardigree’s leadership, the USF St. Pete experienced a surge in investments, including $34.3 million for the Environmental and Oceanographic Sciences Research and Teaching Facility and $7.5 million for the Office of Veterans Success.
The campus was gifted more than $3.5 million to develop the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Risk to Resilience Lab, a research center dedicated to studying and mitigating human trafficking in Florida, and also received $1 million to fund the Eileen Hoffman Hafer UMatter program, providing young adults with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to experience higher education and campus life.
Hardigree’s tenure saw the USF St. Pete campus introduce numerous new programs and research opportunities for students, ranging from the creation of a “campus comfort dog” program to the expansion of public health and hospitality education to the adoption of a nursing bachelor’s degree program that begins next fall.
Hardigree, the school says, was also at the helm during some of the campus’ most difficult moments, guiding students and faculty through six hurricanes as well as multiple recovery efforts.
“Since joining USF St. Petersburg, Chancellor Hardigree has demonstrated a deep commitment to academic excellence and student success, and she has helped strengthen our community partnerships,” USF President Rhea Law says in the statement. “We wish her all the best in this exciting new opportunity.”
According to the statement, USF will begin the search for an interim regional chancellor “soon.” Her departure comes at a time of transition for the university’s top leadership.
On Sept. 30, the search committee for USF’s next president announced its sole finalist: Moez Limayem. Limayem spent a decade as the Lynn Pippenger Dean of the Muma College of Business before leaving USF in 2022 to become president of the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. If approved by USF’s Board of Trustees and the Florida Board of Governors, Limayem will replace Law, who announced in February that she would step down from the position she’s held since 2022.
USF also created a brand new leadership position — the first of its kind across the country — when it hired Rob Higgins to be the new CEO of Athletics. Higgins spent more than 20 years as executive director of the Tampa Bay Sports Commission. His new job eclipses USF’s traditional Athletics Director position, which was previously held by Michael Kelly until he was tapped to take on the same role at the U.S. Naval Academy.