Indian-American Menu Khator has become the first person of Indian origin to be appointed as the head of the prestigious University of Houston, which has more than 56,000 students on its rolls.
Khator, who was the sole finalist for the position, was unanimously appointed to be the next UH president during a special board meeting on Monday, the governing board for the university has confirmed.
Khator, 52, is expected to assume the chancellor role by January.
"We have found an incredible person to lead this university and this system into 21st century," said Welcome W Wilson Sr, Chairman of UH Board of Regents.
Khator, provost of University of South Florida, will replace Jay Gogue, who left in March to become the president of Auburn University, his alma mater.
Born and raised in India in a small town of Uttar Pradesh to a family of lawyers, Khator came to the US as a teenager, the wife of a graduate student she met 10 days before their arranged marriage.
She later followed him to USF, accepted a temporary faculty position there and began to climb the administrative ladder.
Khator's early interests were in education, but she could only finish her bachelors in India. She cried and went on a hunger strike after learning of her arranged marriage to a stranger, believing her dream of a master's degree had ended.
"I didn't want wealth or jewellery," Khator said, adding "I wanted space and the opportunity to grow."
But she found it with her new husband, Suresh Khator, an engineering student at Purdue University. He encouraged her to enroll at the school, even though she spoke little English.
Suresh translated as his wife met with a dean, who allowed her to enroll on a provisional basis. She seized the opportunity, earning high grades while learning the language from reruns of I Love Lucy and The Andy Griffith Show.
In their cramped apartment, the couple began a 34-year pattern of working through things together. Suresh refused his father-in-law's money for a car and took extra jobs to help pay his wife's tuition.
Today he remains her most trusted adviser. "We built our life together here," said Khator, who earned a master's degree and doctorate in political science from Purdue.
"A lot of credit goes to my husband," she said.
The couple moved to Florida in 1983 after Suresh received an offer from USF. Two years later, she took a temporary teaching post in the political science department, leading to a series of jobs and assignments that eventually landed her in the provost's office.
Former USF president Betty Castor said Khator was a quick study as her faculty assistant from 1995 to 1997. Khator became deeply involved with the budget and legislative affairs while working with Castor.
During her four years as provost, Khator recruited top faculty and more students from diverse backgrounds while raising millions of dollars from government and private sources. The amount of South Florida's sponsored research, meanwhile, grew 22 percent to $310 million during this period.