The third candidate for provost, Jay Gatrell, was announced on Eastern’s website Thursday.

Gatrell is currently vice provost for faculty affairs and research at Bellarmine University, a private Catholic university in Louisville, Kentucky.

An open session for students to ask Gatrell questions will be 1 to 1:50 p.m. Thursday in the Arcola-Tuscola Room of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union. A similar session for faculty will follow from 2 to 2:50 p.m. in the same room, and a session for staff will be held afterwards from 3 to 3:50 p.m. in the 1895 Room of the Union.

Gatrell will arrive in Charleston Wednesday evening and leave Friday afternoon. In addition to the open forums, he will meet for hour-long sessions with deans, academic councils and Faculty Senate, among other groups.

Gatrell has served as vice provost at Bellarmine since November 2014. He was acting vice president for academic affairs at the institution from December 2014 until March 2015.

Gatrell started at Bellarmine in January 2014 as assistant vice president for institutional effectiveness, research and graduate initiatives.

Gatrell has also been a geography and environmental studies professor since 2014. From 2000 to 2014, he was a geography professor at Indiana State University. He served in several different administrative roles at Indiana State, including dean of research and graduate education, dean of the college of graduate and professional studies and associate dean for budget and research.

He was a geography professor at Wright State University from 1999-2000 and earned his doctorate in geography from West Virginia University in 1999.

According to Gatrell’s curriculum vitae, since 2014, his team has helped increase study abroad enrollment by 50 percent; increased VA-eligible students by 18 percent and improved rankings for veteran students; expanded undergraduate and graduate research and initiated a “Women in Science” speaker series at Bellarmine.

Leon Mire can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].