Brian Houston is the associate provost for faculty affairs at the Mizzou. In this role, he manages faculty recruitment, hiring, salary, and workload adjustment and the faculty promotion and tenure process. He serves as liaison to Faculty Council, serves as the academic liaison to the SEC and coordinates efforts to study faculty satisfaction. He supervises the Teaching for Learning Center, the Campus Writing Program and the Director of Educational Assessment. Finally, he supports department chairs across campus and runs the Provost Leadership Program.
Specific duties that Dr. Houston fulfills include:
- Manage faculty recruitment efforts including the review of faculty hires
- Review faculty compensation and workload adjustments
- Oversee the faculty promotion and tenure process
- Review faculty research and development leaves
- Serve as liaison to Faculty Council
- Serve as the academic liaison for the SEC
- Run the Provost Leadership Program
- Coordinate two COACHE survey efforts for campus and serve as a liaison on the campus COACHE committee
- Serve as Provost Office data trustee
- Liaison to Missouri Online
- Supervise the Teaching for Learning Center, the Campus Writing Program, and the Director of Educational Assessment
- Support department chairs
- Liaison to Assessment Resource Center (ARC)
- Other duties as assigned
J. Brian Houston, PhD, is professor in the department of communication. He is also director for the Disaster and Community Crisis Center (DCC). Prior to associate provost for faculty affairs, he was associate provost for academic programs (2024-2026), chair of the Department of Public Health in the College of Health Sciences (2023-2024) and the Department of Communication in the College of Arts and Science (2017-2023), and interim chair of the Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Science (2020-2022). He participated in the SEC Academic Leadership Development Program in 2022-2023.
Houston’s research focuses on communication at all phases of disasters and on the public and mental health effects and political consequences of community crises. Recent and current research projects have examined the impact of media coverage of terrorism on children and adults, the role of new media during disasters, and the capacity for using information communication technologies to increase community resilience. These projects are located at the intersections of the literatures addressing disasters, communication, media, public health, mental health, and political socialization.
Houston’s work has been supported by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institute for Nursing Research (NINR), and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).