Brian Pappas is proud to serve as the seventh chancellor of Indiana University South Bend, the largest regional campus of Indiana University. He is an inclusive administrator, faculty member, and mediator, with expertise in organizational development, collaboration, conflict management, and experiential learning.
His career prior to IU South Bend included serving as dean of the University of North Dakota School of Law, where he helped advance shared governance, enrollment, and experiential programs. He also served as Associate Provost at Eastern Michigan University, overseeing recruitment, policy development, tenure and promotion, and collective bargaining for instructional staff.
As a faculty member, Pappas directed Conflict Management programs at Boise State University, including teaching a “Navigating Difficult Conversations” course to freshmen. As faculty at Michigan State University's Law College for over a decade, he held various roles, including as Director of the Conflict Resolution Clinic, where he developed experiential programs such as training prison inmates as peer mediators. He has taught over 90 courses in Alternative Dispute Resolution, law, and public administration.
A frequent mediator and trainer, Pappas has trained thousands of mediators in court, community, business, and government settings. He integrates mindfulness into his teaching and completed a two-year Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification program in 2023. His 23 scholarly works on conflict resolution and Title IX are published in journals such as the Journal of Legal Education, Law & Society Review, and Harvard Negotiation Law Review. He was recognized with the State Bar of Michigan ADR Section’s 2013 George N. Bashara, Jr. Award for exemplary service, serves on the Mindfulness in Law Society Board, and chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Dispute Resolution in 2022-2023.
Pappas was a multi-country Fulbright Scholar (2021-23) in Japan, Greece, and Denmark. He earned a Ph.D. in public administration from the University of Kansas, a J.D. from Wayne State University, an LL.M. in Dispute Resolution from the University of Missouri, and a B.A. and M.P.P. from the University of Michigan. He is married to Debbie, and they have three sons: Charlie, Ben, and Sam.
