Jeffrey Scott Vitter is a U.S. computer scientist and academic administrator. Born in 1955 in New Orleans, Vitter has served in several senior higher education administration posts. He is a former chancellor of the University of Mississippi. He assumed the chancellor position on January 1, 2016. His formal investiture to the chancellorship took place on November 10, 2016, at the University of Mississippi's Oxford Campus.
From 1980 to 1992, Vitter progressed through the faculty ranks in the Department of Computer Science at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He was awarded tenure in 1985 at the age of 29. At Duke University in Durham, North Carolina from 1993 to 2002, Vitter held a distinguished professorship as the Gilbert, Louis, and Edward Lehrman Professor. He chaired the Department of Computer Science for eight and a half years. From 2002 to 2008, Vitter was the Frederick Hovde Dean of the College of Science at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, where he led the development of two strategic plans, establishing a dual focus of excellence in core departments and in multidisciplinary collaborations. He oversaw net growth by roughly 60 faculty members and launched the collaborative design of an innovative outcomes-based college curriculum. Vitter served at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas as provost and executive vice president for academics from 2008 to 2009, leading the 48,000-student university in the development of the institution's academic master plan and launching initiatives affecting faculty start-up allocations, multidisciplinary priorities and diversity. He also oversaw A&M's campus in Doha, Qatar. Since 2010, Vitter was provost and executive vice chancellor and Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. As provost, Vitter was the chief academic and operations officer for the Lawrence and Edwards campuses. He co-chaired the development of the KU strategic plan Bold Aspirations and oversaw the creation of the first university-wide KU Core curriculum, expansion of the Schools of Engineering and Business, boosting multidisciplinary research and funding around four strategic initiatives, major growth of technology commercialization and corporate partnerships, and administrative reorganization and efficiency. Vitter spent sabbatical leaves at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, CA; INRIA in Rocquencourt, France; Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris; Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey; Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark, and INRIA in Sophia Antipolis, France. On October 29, 2015, Vitter was unanimously named as the 17th chancellor of the University of Mississippi by the Mississippi Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning. He began duties on January 1, 2016. He introduced a strategic plan named Flagship Forward, with initiatives including a $1 billion building program, multidisciplinary research networks of faculty called Flagship Constellations, annual Technology Summits, major community partnerships through the M Partner program, and extended capacity and reach of the University of Mississippi Medical Center. The university began to look at Confederate symbols on campus and established an Office of Diversity and Community Engagement. In December 2018, the university's status as a Carnegie R1 research university was reaffirmed. In November 2018, Vitter announced that he would step down as chancellor to become a regular faculty member on January 4, 2019.
Vitter and his wife Sharon have three children: Jillian, J. Scott Jr. and Audrey. He is a brother of former U.S. Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, and as a hobby, he and his wife are the family genealogists.
