Harrison Keller

Harrison became President of UNT in August 2024. In his first two years, he steered UNT through significant fiscal and policy challenges while launching Look North: UNT 2030, a five-year strategic plan shaped by more than 1,200 campus and community voices, and the university's first capital campaign in more than a decade, the Better Look North $100 million campaign for student success. Under his leadership, UNT became the first American research university to adopt a public accountability metric of how quickly students realize positive economic returns from their investments in their degrees.

Improving students’ transitions into and success in higher education has been a central focus of Harrison’s work throughout his career. At UNT, he has initiated multiple strategies to help students and employers adapt to and navigate accelerating changes in the economy, including expanded corporate partnerships and transfer pathways with community colleges. Most recently, UNT became one of the nation’s first institutions to be accredited because of its strong economic returns for graduates.

Before UNT, Harrison served as Texas Commissioner of Higher Education, where he led development of the Building a Talent Strong Texas strategic plan, through which Texas became the first state to condition its attainment goals on the value of credentials in the state’s economy. During his tenure, he guided the design of landmark outcomes-based community college funding reforms, development and launch of the My Texas Future student advising platform, and multiple policies to bolster student success, affordability, and university research.

Previously, Harrison spent more than a decade in increasingly senior roles at the University of Texas at Austin, where he founded two large-scale student success programs, the OnRamps dual enrollment program that serves more than 70,000 students per year and the Texas OnCourse initiative that supports secondary counselors and advisers across the state.

Trained as a philosopher at the University of Notre Dame and Georgetown University, Harrison also served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. Whether leading innovations with campus innovators, partnering with industry leaders, serving on national boards and commissions, or working with state and national policymakers, Harrison is a constant advocate for unlocking human potential and expanding opportunity through higher education.