I’m not a very good driver (just ask my family), but one thing I do pretty well is merge into traffic on a freeway. Lately, however, my merge skills are being put to the test on the long, long on-ramp to my first position as a provost.
In a series of columns for The Chronicle, I am exploring the role of the provost. My first essay laid the groundwork, and now I turn to how I’ve been preparing to take office. July 1 is my start date as provost at the University of Tulsa. And, if you can allow me to extend the driving metaphor one more time, I know I’ll be up to speed by then. I will have spent six months finishing up my work at Arizona State University and getting to know people at Tulsa.
Onboarding via technology. I’m meeting people from a distance, since I won’t actually have the opportunity to come to the campus before July. The flu scuttled my plans to spend a week apartment-hunting and campus-surveying. And with a busy travel schedule for work and family this spring, it became impossible to reschedule. So I’ve reserved an Airbnb for my first month in Tulsa, and I’ll have to figure out my housing for the year while I’m moving into my office and beginning work as provost.
Thanks to the pandemic, videoconferencing software has become a permanent part of how we work, not only in the college classroom but also in administration. So far I’ve relied on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and even LinkedIn video chat (who’da thunk something like that would actually work?) to start getting to know some of the people with whom I’ll be working and to begin learning institutional processes at Tulsa.
I have been careful not to pretend to be doing the job of provost. There’s an outstanding acting provost in place, and I look forward to working with her when I’m actually in the position and on the payroll. In the meantime, when I sit in on university meetings, it’s to listen and learn — not to proclaim or decide.
I’ve met online with deans and directors, with faculty leadership, and with a host of other administrators. I’ve sat in on sessions about accreditation and about the university budget. I have set up a schedule of regular Teams meetings with the acting provost and have had multiple conversations with faculty leaders whose appointments include some responsibility to the office of the provost. And I’ve had one in-person meeting — with an associate dean who was working with colleagues at Arizona State over spring break and invited me to a coffee shop to “talk Tulsa.”
Building a relationship with No. 1, as No. 2. Perhaps most important, I’ve had an extensive back and forth, mostly via email, with the university’s president — aka my new boss. We’ve discussed all sorts of issues, including student recruitment, enrollment, and retention; accreditation; faculty recruitment and retention; and national searches for deans, vice provosts, and vice presidents. We’ve talked strategy, tactics, and educational philosophy.
Being a dean or a provost is a tough job, even in the best of circumstances. After stepping down (involuntarily) from my previous deanship at Arizona State, I vowed never again to work in administration unless I felt in sync with my boss. That’s an awkward way of putting it, but I’ve learned that it’s possible to both respect your administrative superiors and be unable to enjoy working with them.
Being “in sync with” my new boss will mean that we can collaborate, disagree, brainstorm, and troubleshoot together, and that we understand how, when, and where to have those interactions.
Understanding the role. As provost, I will be speaking up for, and on behalf of, the faculty, the curriculum, the deans, and the students. At times I will be speaking truth — at least truth in the way that faculty members understand it — to power.
But at times I’ll also be speaking power to truth — that is, managing an academic budget that will never be able to support all of the hiring, research, and curricular needs that faculty members (and I, too) might wish for. I’ll be overseeing faculty hiring and managing a fair but rigorous process through which people may or may not earn tenure and promotion. I’ll be working to build the university’s international footprint, aiming to increase the number of students who come to our university from other countries or leave the campus to spend a part of their education in a different part of the world. I’ll be collaborating with (but also supervising) deans who have primary responsibility for building excellence in their domains. I’ll be making sure that we can demonstrate to the world, through accreditation, that we are practicing what we preach in our mission statement. And of course I’ll be doing all that within the limits of the university’s budget.
As I talk with administrators and faculty and staff members this spring, I’m not only learning a “cast of characters” with their individual personal and professional traits. I am also getting a sense of the creative energy that they individually bring to their roles. And I’m starting to see where their talents and passions might translate into areas they might not even have begun to contemplate.
I don’t see the provost’s job as merely managing the talent in place, but rather, as unleashing that talent in service of the university’s broad goals. I want to help people to be able to do their jobs better; but I also want them to think about what jobs they might want to do in the future.
Lingering doubts? Fortunately, no. This “getting to know you” stage has only increased my confidence in the choice I made to accept the position of provost.
(But what if my confidence had been diminished by getting to know people at my new institution prior to my start date? What should I — or any incoming leader — do in that unfortunate situation? Renege on a signed contract? Or abide by a commitment and begin working to get out as soon as possible? Those are questions for a different kind of column, one that I will, happily, not have to write myself!)
The nearly intolerable 11 weeks between a U.S. presidential election and the inauguration of the winning candidate might now be seen as a dangerous anachronism, allowing for all sorts of shenanigans. That gap was designed, in part, for a world in which communication could be made only in person or through snail mail. And yet for many incoming deans, provosts, and presidents, the wait to take office is substantially longer than it was for President Biden.
I’m certainly glad that I have been able to get up to speed with my future colleagues via technology. But do I wish I had been able to ditch my spring commitments (and my spouse and son in Phoenix) and come to Tulsa for a February 1 start date?
Yeah, probably. But I hope that all of the learning I’ve been doing during this extended period of waiting will pay off in my being able to start work very, very quickly.
