Touro University Nevada names Dr. Andrew Priest as Campus President and Provost
Touro University Nevada, home to Nevada’s largest medical school, announces the appointment of Dr. Andrew Priest to Campus President and Provost. Shelley Berkley, who has served as the CEO and Senior Provost for Touro since 2014, remains with the university in a new role.
As Campus President and Provost, Dr. Priest will serve at the helm of one of the fastest-growing medical schools and health care professions institutions in the western United States with more than 1,500 students enrolled in a variety of programs including osteopathic medicine, physician assistant studies, education, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and medical health sciences.
“I am honored for this opportunity to lead Touro University Nevada into the future as the Campus President and Provost,” Dr. Priest said. “At Touro, we’ve fostered a campus culture that has led to tremendous growth throughout our programs. Our faculty remain deeply committed to helping our students succeed inside the classroom and out in the community as they work tirelessly to complete their education. These students are on their way to becoming the physicians, health care professionals, and educators our world desperately needs. The future is very bright for this institution.”
Most recently, Dr. Priest served as Touro’s Provost and Chief Academic Officer and was responsible for Touro’s academic programs and ensuring all academic affairs followed federal, regional, state, and local statutes; accreditation principles and requirements; board policies; and other higher education practices. He joined Touro in 2012 as the Dean of the College of Health and Human Services before being named Interim Provost and Chief Academic Officer in 2020. Dr. Priest assumed the official role of Provost and Chief Academic Officer one year later. Prior to joining Touro, he held various faculty positions across the United States, including chair of the physical therapy department at Clarke University in Dubuque, Iowa, and faculty member at Texas Tech University’s Health Sciences Center. Dr. Priest was a physical therapist in the U.S. Army before beginning his career in higher education.
A resident of Las Vegas for nearly 60 years, Berkley has been promoted to Senior Vice President of the entire Touro system. Berkley served as CEO and Senior Provost of Touro’s Western Division for nearly a decade and makes the transition with a long list of career accomplishments. During Berkley’s tenure as CEO and Senior Provost, Touro expanded its medical school and physician assistant studies class sizes, making both the largest programs of their kind in the state of Nevada. She also secured millions of dollars in gifts and grants to enhance Touro’s programs, scholarships, and educational opportunities, including mobile healthcare outreach that has allowed Touro students to provide free healthcare services to thousands of Southern Nevada’s most vulnerable community members.
Along with Dr. Priest, Berkley was instrumental in helping guide the University through the unprecedented times of COVID-19, which forced the campus to transition to virtual learning in the spring of 2020. Despite the challenges brought on by the pandemic, Berkley, Dr. Priest, and their colleagues worked together to create a plan that ensured students could still complete their curriculum in time for graduation. Her leadership was crucial in ensuring Touro’s students and faculty served on the frontlines against COVID-19, beginning with testing and treating the Valley’s homeless population at Cashman Center in the earliest days of the pandemic. She also worked to ensure that Touro continued to do its part by implementing testing and vaccination initiatives to keep Southern Nevadans and visitors safe and healthy.
“It gives me great pleasure to see Dr. Priest named as the Campus President and Provost of Touro University Nevada,” Berkley said. “His unwavering commitment to our students’ success makes him the ideal candidate for this position. I am proud of the work we’ve done together to educate thousands of physicians, physician assistants, nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and educators. And I welcome this new opportunity to develop new partnerships, strengthen our current ones, and help our university continue to thrive as one of the premier higher educational institutions in the United States.”
