Dr. Kathy Johnson began serving as interim executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer of IUPUI in August, 2015, and was appointed to the position permanently in July, 2016. IUPUI is a core campus of Indiana University and the state’s urban research and academic health sciences campus. IUPUI enrolls nearly 30,000 students, including over 8,000 graduate students, with full-time faculty and staff numbering nearly 7,000, including more than 3,500 full-time faculty, an annual budget of $1.5 billion, and external research funding of more than $441 million in the 2017-18 fiscal year. IUPUI offers more than 480 academic programs across 17 schools, including the schools of liberal arts and science, as well as professional schools of business, education, law, art and design, health and human sciences, nursing, engineering and technology, public and environmental affairs, dentistry, informatics and computing, social work, public health, philanthropy, and medicine. As executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer, Dr. Johnson plays a key leadership role in developing and guiding the implementation of IUPUI's academic plans and programs. Additionally, she oversees the process for the recruitment, hiring and advancement of faculty, including promoting the continued success of the campus's efforts to increase the quality and diversity of its faculty.

Some of Johnson's administrative accomplishments include creating the Office of Institutional Research and Decision Support, which combines the campus's strength in institutional research with expertise in analytics, survey research and program evaluation; launching the Division of Undergraduate Education as a means of providing more coordination of the academic experience for undergraduates beyond the first year of college; creating the Office of Faculty Diversity and Inclusion; and working with faculty leaders to redesign and better coordinate holistic professional development and support for faculty through the Forum Network.

Professor Johnson joined IUPUI in 1993 as an assistant professor of psychology in the School of Science at IUPUI. From 2008 to 2011, she served as chair of the Department of Psychology. From 2011 to 2015, Dr. Johnson served as dean of University College and associate vice chancellor for undergraduate education.
Dr. Johnson is a graduate of Emory University with a Ph.D. in Psychology, specializing in Cognition and Development. She is active across a number of advisory boards and councils, and currently serves as president of the Association of Chief Academic Officers (ACAO) and on the Executive Committee for APLU's Council on Academic Affairs.