I have been on the job in my first provostship for more than half a year. When I’ve been successful — which I hope has been most of the time — I’ve felt like a provost. Meaning: like a campus leader charged with bringing together faculty aspirations with the vision of the president. When I haven’t been as successful, I’ve perhaps confused the provost’s job with other leadership positions.
It’s a temptation for a provost who has been a dean — as most provosts have, including me — to intrude on the turf of the deans. You have, on the one hand, the institution’s most important academic leaders, and on the other, the provost whose job is to lead them.
I’m learning that it’s an intricate dance. These two seemingly similar positions do, in fact, deeply differ. So for the benefit of other new provosts, of deans who might aspire to move up, and of anyone else interested in academic leadership, here’s a look at how to navigate those differences successfully.
What complicates the relationship is that deans and provosts oversee the same territory. Both roles are concerned with academic affairs — things like faculty hiring, tenure, promotion, curriculum, assessment, accreditation, research, academic integrity, scheduling, and so on. But there are key differences:
- Deans have a more hands-on approach. They closely manage the work of department chairs to bring the curriculum to students and to support the faculty and staff members who make education and research happen. By contrast, the provost’s role is more big picture, coordinating an institution’s academic affairs via governance bodies such as the council of deans and the faculty senate and via offices that fall under the provost’s purview, including the registrar, global engagement, academic advising, and — sometimes — research, student life, and enrollment management.
- The deans directly manage the vast majority of the academic-affairs budget. Their budgets roll up into the provost’s budget, inflating the amount of money that provosts can say they are “responsible for.”
- Deans are the chief executives of their colleges. The provost represents the deans to the president and the governing board and leads academic affairs on behalf of the president. The provost, that is, can veto deans’ decisions and can order the deans to fulfill institutional objectives.
- The dean’s office is in a college — in close proximity to departments and to faculty members who do the real work. The provost’s office is usually close to the president’s.
To be successful as provost, you have to let the deans be the experts, even (or especially) in your own discipline. Deans will quite rightly resent your interference in the management of their college, even (or especially) when the provost happens to be a faculty member in one of the departments within a dean’s college.
In the provost’s role, you oversee an array of academic staff members who can help the deans and departments manage curriculum and schedule courses. The registrar, the assessment office, and the university’s advising team all have global expertise and a disinterested perspective on elements of academic success.
While a department’s staff members serve that particular unit and its faculty members, the provost’s various staff offices have keen insights into the way education works across the institution — via their access to campuswide data and experience, and their direct line to the provost. You rely on your staff members to provide ideas on how to make the institution more responsive to students’ needs and then bring those recommendations to you, as the provost, to present to the deans for implementation.
So it can be frustrating to the provost when deans and their departments don’t follow through with changes that might seem — to the provost — to offer improvements.
When I, for example, get a recommendation to help a department schedule classes in a way that would allow undergraduate majors to sequence their courses more effectively, I need to remind myself to keep my office’s work on the level of recommendation. Because the deans are the keepers of college curricula, and as much as the provost has a range of information and a campuswide commitment to coordination, the deans have direct oversight of programs, personnel, and physical spaces.
Deans possess specialized knowledge that the provost’s office doesn’t have. In most cases they’ve spent their careers in one or more of the disciplines housed in the colleges they now oversee. Each dean speaks for their own discipline, arguing for resources to advance its excellence and range and setting strategy for faculty hiring and program development. They speak to, and raise money from, alumni and other donors who are interested, professionally or personally, in the college’s departments and programs.
Once you move into the provost’s office, however, your responsibility is to the institution’s academic programs writ large. Like the deans, the provost has a critical role to play in faculty hiring, promotion, and tenure, ensuring both fairness to the faculty members and excellence to the institution. But the provost has to approach faculty matters (even in your own field) with a view toward the institution rather than the disciplines. That’s a different set of lenses.
At institutions that control their finances using “responsibility center management,” or RCM, the deans directly handle their budget’s income and expenses, with tuition revenues coming back to the college (minus a “tax” for campuswide academic processes) to pay for salaries and facilities. The provost has no control over college finances. So those who equate the allocation of resources with power and influence should perhaps skip the role of provost in their ascent to the presidency at an RCM campus. (The University of Tulsa, where I am provost, does not use RCM.)
And, as articles and studies have pointed out in recent years, more and more deans are chosen as presidents without having served as provosts. And more and more provosts profess contentment with staying put in that role, rather than aspiring to a college presidency. On plenty of campuses, then, deans can seem to be the principal academic leaders, with the provost doing more coordinating than commanding.
But not entirely. All of this theorizing goes out the window — even at places using RCM — if some problem or controversy emerges. In that kind of situation, many presidents will ask the provost to intervene. As provost, you serve at the pleasure of the president. You have no independent power base, no students, no faculty, few donors, little space. The power in the provost’s office is delegated from the president, even if the deans report to the provost and constitute the provost’s most important team.
So as a new provost, how do you find your place within whatever the complicated internal power dynamic is on your campus? Establishing relationships with the deans individually and as a group should be the first and most important task on your “to do” list:
- If you’ve been a dean at your institution prior to stepping into the provost’s shoes, you’ll need to acknowledge that you’ve been one of them and, at the same time, signal that you know that your erstwhile colleagues now report to you. The team is still the same, but the leadership has changed. In this case, you’ll want to make some explicit changes to the way the council of deans has operated in the past. These should be substantial, and not merely cosmetic, and should reflect your own managerial style. And in your one-on-one meetings, establish yourself — perhaps with a wink and a nod acknowledging the shift — as the provost to whom the deans now report.
- If you’re coming from the outside, try to schedule a retreat with the deans within a couple of months. (If you’re from the inside, you might want to wait a semester to let things air out, so to speak, in the individual and group relationships.) A retreat is a great way to get to know your new colleagues and to call on their knowledge, creativity, and imagination in charting the institution’s future. Follow the retreat with a party. I was lucky enough to have a business dean who scheduled a beautiful dinner party after our retreat, cementing relationships (and helping me to get a new view of the institution and, indeed, my new city).
There are all kinds of exceptions to the typical power dynamic between provosts and deans. Some universities have tried eliminating the deans, instead creating vice provost roles to manage academic life, including the distinct colleges. Some small institutions don’t even bother with the role of provost, instead having the deans report directly to the president, whose office manages the central functions that might report to the provost’s office. And of course there exist meddling presidents who can muddy the waters further.
For many faculty members, the provost’s office — staffed with academic vice provosts and with others overseeing the academic programs that really should, and do, live with the faculty — constitutes an unwarranted and unwanted extra administrative layer, sapping faculty resources that could be used to hire teachers, support research, and basically leave the professors alone. And to many students, the function of the provost is as odd and inscrutable as the word “provost” itself.
How to define this strange role, and lead from it, will be the subject of my next column.
