UNLV Regents Drop the Interim Tag: Chris Heavey Named the University's 12th President on a Three-Year Deal

October 16, 2026

LAS VEGAS

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas has its president. The Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents voted on Friday, October 16 to remove the interim label from Chris Heavey and appoint him the university's 12th permanent president, ending an 18-month audition that began in the middle of a leadership crisis and finished with some of the strongest numbers the school has ever posted.

Heavey, a psychologist who has spent more than three decades at UNLV in classrooms and administrative offices, starts the permanent job on Saturday. There was no national search and no outside finalist. The regents looked at the man who had been doing the work since April 2025 and decided the search had already happened, one semester at a time.

The Vote, and the One Argument in the Room

The appointment carried by a 10-3 vote, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. The three regents who voted no were not voting against Heavey. Their objection, as reported out of the meeting, was to the size of the pay package, which matches what his predecessor earned. They said they supported the appointment itself.

Board Chair Stephanie Goodman framed the decision as a bet on familiarity: a president who already knows the faculty, the Legislature and the valley's employers, and who can connect what the university does to what Nevada needs. In the university's announcement, she credited him with the experience, focus and collaborative approach to keep UNLV moving forward.

The path to Friday's vote was written into state higher-education rules. Under the NSHE code, an interim president has to serve at least a year before the board can consider making the appointment permanent, and the board first has to hear, in a public meeting, from the campus constituencies: faculty and classified-staff representatives, student government and the foundation board. UNLV's student senate had already gone on record in August, adopting a resolution that favored making Heavey permanent over launching a national search.

What the Contract Says

The employment agreement, published with the regents' agenda materials, runs for three years, from October 17, 2026 through October 31, 2029. It pays Heavey a base salary of $627,816 a year. On top of that come annual allowances of $8,000 for transportation, $18,000 for housing and $5,000 for hosting university guests.

The timeline matters because of how Heavey got the interim job. The regents appointed him on April 24, 2025, a month after listening sessions on campus produced a clear request: an interim leader with established community connections who could provide stability and continuity. He stepped in following the resignation of Keith Whitfield, and the interim appointment itself was written as a three-year term. Friday's vote converted the back half of that arrangement into the permanent presidency, with a clock that now runs to the fall of 2029.

Thirty Years on Maryland Parkway

Heavey is about as inside as an inside hire gets. Before the interim presidency he spent more than five years as UNLV's executive vice president and provost, the university's chief academic officer. Earlier stops on the same campus included senior vice provost, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and vice provost for undergraduate education. He is a tenured professor of psychology whose academic work studies inner experience: how people's thoughts and feelings unfold moment to moment, and how researchers can measure that honestly.

His degrees trace a California path to a Nevada career: a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a master's and a doctorate in clinical psychology from UCLA. By the time the regents voted, he had been part of UNLV for more than 30 years. When he thanked the board on Friday, he called the interim stretch an honor, said the university's momentum was strong and its work just beginning, and described a career's worth of belief in public higher education and in the people who make UNLV run.

The Interim Year, by the Numbers

The case for skipping a national search rested on a scoreboard, and the university laid it out in its announcement. Enrollment reached nearly 34,000 students, a record. UNLV now graduates roughly 7,000 students a year. Its graduation rate hit the highest mark in school history, and its retention rate sat near a record. Research expenditures climbed to about $134 million.

Two outside validations landed on his watch as well. The university completed its seven-year accreditation review without receiving any recommendations for improvement, an unusually clean result, and its two signature Carnegie classifications, the R1 designation for very high research activity and the Community Engagement classification, were both reaffirmed.

Heavey also pushed workforce-facing programs during the interim period, in fields Southern Nevada employers keep asking for: cybersecurity, health care, mental health, sports management, and insurance and risk management. For a city whose economy runs on hospitality and is trying to widen into health care, technology and sports business, that list reads like a map of where Las Vegas wants to go next, and the regents noticed.

What Comes Next

The permanent title arrives with a full inbox. Enrollment records are easier to set than to hold, and a graduation rate at an all-time high has nowhere to go but down unless the advising, funding and course availability underneath it keep pace. Research spending near $134 million has to be defended in a competitive federal funding climate. And the university is mid-push on capital and workforce projects, including plans for a new Lee Business School building meant to deepen ties with Southern Nevada employers.

Heavey also inherits the political calendar of every Nevada university president: a Legislature that meets in 2027, a system office that evaluates him annually, and a contract that expires October 31, 2029, which means the conversation about what comes after starts sooner than anyone will admit.

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