Provost
Welcome Acting Provost Tim Marshall!
What’s a Provost?
The Provost is the chief academic officer of a University. He is the students’ and faculty’s direct representative in the administration.
A great provost
As of March 2009, the new Acting Provost is Parsons Dean Tim Marshall. Marshall was USS’s choice, and we are very happy with his appointment.
What happened that caused all this trouble?
During President Kerrey’s 7 years in office, five provosts left. The last Provost, Joe Westphal, was a widely-liked person who had been Chancellor of the University of Maine system, and came here to start the new Environmental Studies Program. Like his predecessors Ben Lee and Arjun Appadurai, he was widely perceived to have left the provostship because of disputes with President Kerrey, particularly that all power — including over the academic budget — was in the hands of Executive Vice President Jim Murtha, who was widely perceived by students, faculty, and administration as President Kerrey’s enforcer.
USS and the faculty had presented many proposals in our Agenda to Lee and Westphal, and each time the Provost changed, leaving the university in chaos. In this last case on Westphal’s departure, President Kerrey appointed himself acting Provost. This resulted in a nearly unanimous vote of no-confidence in President Kerrey and EVP Murtha by the full and part-time faculty as well as by University Student Senate.
A three-day campus occupation by various students closed down the school for a day in December 2008, with various demands, some of which were met.
President Kerrey admitted appointing himself was a mistake. Over Winter Break 2008-09, all the deans, the University Student Senate, and the co-chairs of the Faculty Senate made an independent decision to form a Search Committee to choose and recommend an Interim Provost. The three USS officers, the speaker of the GFSS, and a representative of Parsons served on this committee, as well as two trustees. President Kerrey accepted the commitee’s recommendation and appointed Parsons Dean Tim Marshall as Provost.
Time to restructure
University Student Senate appreciates President Kerrey’s March 09 decision to agree (*see note below) to the Faculty Senate and USS’s resolution to delay the search for a Permanent Provost until Tim Marshall has had time to restructure the Provost’s Office (and to work with EVP Murtha to move responsibilities from Murtha to the Provost’s Office.) USS is happy to help Marshall in these tasks in any way possible, and looks forward to students joining the Provost Search Committee next year.
* What caused the 2/10/09 second faculty vote against Kerrey?
Among other things, on 2/9/09 Kerrey emailed the entire faculty (and told the press) that he would not delay the search for a permanent Provost, despite widespread faculty feeling and an Interim Provost Search Committee vote that such delay was necessary in order to repair the administration first, so to be able to attract good Permanent Provost candidates.
Kerrey’s public negation of this resolution — thus the appearance of ignoring the assembled will of the faculty — caused the first-ever joint meeting of 500+ full and part-time faculty 2/10/09 to take a 100% vote against Kerrey. The next day, USS President Peter Ian Cummings spoke against Kerrey’s decision — and the way he publicized it, “embroiling the campus in chaos” — to a full Board of Trustees meeting.
However, on 3/3/09, in announcing he had appointed Marshall, Kerrey added that he would in fact delay the Permanent Provost search, reversing his previous statement.