Warren Kent Wray
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
University of Missouri-Rolla

Dr. Warren K. (Kent) Wray, a civil engineer specializing in geotechnical engineering, became provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Missouri-Rolla on August 1, 2006.  Wray is the chief academic officer of the UMR campus.  He also has responsibility for enrollment management, distance education, institutional research and assessment, information technology, library, sponsored research, and graduate studies.  He reports directly to the chancellor of UMR, Dr. John F. Carney III.

Prior to his appointment, Wray served as provost and senior vice president for academic and student affairs at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan.

Wray holds bachelor’s degrees in Physics from Washburn University and Civil Engineering from Kansas State University, a master’s degree in Civil Engineering Facilities from the Air Force Institute of Technology, and a doctorate in Civil Engineering (Geotechnical Engineering) from Texas A&M University at College Station, Texas.

Wray was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant in the Air Force following graduation from Kansas State in 1968 and retired from the Air Force Reserves in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 1990.

He began his career in academia in 1978 as an assistant professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.  Rising through the academic ranks, he was appointed as the 4th chairman of Texas Tech’s Department of Civil Engineering in 1990.  He joined Ohio University as Dean of the Russ College of Engineering and Technology in 1996 and became provost at Michigan Technological University in 2000.

Wray achieved international recognition for his research in expansive and unsaturated soils, delivering invited state-of-the-art papers at the1st and 2nd International Conferences on Unsaturated Soils in Paris in 1995 and Beijing in 1998, one of only two persons to have delivered such addresses to unsaturated soils international venues in the 1990s.

Wray has been active in technical and professional societies.  He received 11 student chapter outstanding faculty advisor national awards from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) for his work with ASCE student chapters and six college and university-wide research and classroom teaching awards.  He has chaired two national ASCE committees and currently chairs a third national committee while serving on two other national committees.  He is active in the National Society of Professional Engineers and the American Society of Testing and Materials.  He is a fellow of the ASCE and an Honor Member of Chi Epsilon, the Civil Engineering Honorary.