Fleming was provost at Mercer University before coming to USM in January of 1997. Dr. David Huffman announced last July that he would step down as vice president for academic affairs to return to full-time Dr. Karen Yarbrough, longtime vice president for research and planning, agreed to oversee the responsibilities of both VP positions until a successor to Huffman could be found. Meanwhile, the state College Board approved Fleming's request to create the provost post. Kent State is one of only 37 institutions nationwide to receive a Research II University designation from the Carnegie Foundation. That recognizes research that achieves a high level of sponsored, external funding from agencies of a particular stature, such as the National Institutes of Health.
Universities also achieve that status by offering a certain breadth and number of doctoral degrees.
As a university administrator, Henry has delivered professional presentations on academic strategic planning, resource allocation and on the politics of budget reductions in fiscally constrained times. As a professor of mathematics, his research interests have focused on approximation theory. He has had more than 50 refereed papers published and given numerous presentations through North America and abroad, including China and Japan.