TAMPA, Fla. — The University of Tampa has turned to a veteran college leader from South Carolina to steer the school through a leadership change in Tampa.
The private university announced that Harris Pastides, president emeritus of the University of South Carolina, will serve as its interim president. He is set to move into the job over the rest of the fall 2026 semester. The appointment follows word this month that Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg, who became president in 2024, plans to step down.
Pastides has done this kind of work before. He led the University of South Carolina as its 28th president from 2008 until 2019, then came back in 2021 to run that school again on an interim basis after his successor, Bob Caslen, resigned. That second stint lasted from May 2021 to July 2022, when Michael Amiridis took over.
An epidemiologist by training, Pastides grew up in Queens, New York, the son of immigrants from Cyprus, and was the first in his family to go to college. He earned a biology degree at the University at Albany and graduate degrees, including a doctorate in epidemiology, at Yale. Before moving into administration in South Carolina, he spent close to two decades on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
He takes the helm of a campus that has grown sharply in recent decades. The University of Tampa now enrolls more than 11,000 students and offers more than 200 programs of study. Its best-known landmark, Plant Hall, is the former Tampa Bay Hotel built by Henry B. Plant, and its Moorish minarets are an emblem recognized across the city.
The university has not said how long Pastides will serve or when it expects to name a permanent president.
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