Early Input More Effectively Shapes Outcomes

The provost of a university has the task of guiding strategy and policy to constantly improve the quality of the university’s educational, research, and service missions. Because of the scope of that responsibility, it’s easy to get isolated. There’s a temptation to identify and study the issues from too distant a perspective. There’s the threat that a provost loses touch with the key heart and soul of the university.

Higher education is facing unprecedented challenges over the next few years: Rising tuition costs amidst the stagnation of median incomes, the rapidly developing breadth of human knowledge that must be taught, the promise of new learning technologies, and so on. Georgetown aspires to be at the forefront in this world. (That’s one of the reasons for the visioning process we’re mounting next year — see “A Visioning Process for the Georgetown of the Future”).

Such ambitions will not be achieved, I believe, without all of the parts of the university working together. Hence, an effective provost’s office needs to be well informed about the different perspectives across those parts.

I’ve now experienced a year of the current structures that advise the provost. When I arrived, they consisted of the Provost’s Council, the Council of Deans, the Main Campus Executive Faculty, the Faculty Senate, and the Main Campus Planning Committee. Most of these groups are mixes of faculty, administrators, and students. Some of the groups are quite large, so real dialogue is difficult to achieve, and agendas tend to be largely one-way presentations. They have many overlapping members who hear the same message multiple times.

So I think we’d all be better served with a different configuration. One principle of the change I’m contemplating is that different groups deserve direct input. Toward that end, I earlier formed a Provost Student Advisory Committee, with the help of GUSA and GSO. I later formed a faculty equity and extraordinary merit review group, to increase transparency and faculty input into those decisions. These have served their purpose well in teaching me different viewpoints on important issues facing the university. Then we created the faculty positions of Vice-Provosts for education, research, and faculty to make sure faculty are actually leading initiatives.

I’m considering another change in that direction, to increase further faculty input on a continuing basis to the provost — a Provost Faculty Advisory Committee. This committee would replace the Main Campus Planning Committee. It would be a sounding board for the various ideas that we need to address to assure that Georgetown continues to advance.

The committee would be the way that initiatives could be shaped with the help of faculty at an early stage before taking them to the Main Campus Executive Faculty and/or the Faculty Senate. The advisory committee would advise both on budget and on program; it would assist in framing tradeoff decisions that are part of day-to-day work in the provost’s office. When an issue needs input from multiple sources simultaneously, we could bring this group together with others (the administrative leaders in the provost council, the student advisory committee, etc.). If we keep records of the discussions of the group, we could post those for all faculty to see on the provost’s website. After a discussion of preliminary ideas with the MCEF and/or Faculty Senate, the Provost Faculty Advisory Committee could refine the proposed initiatives.

It should be a small group, but I’d want the members to be drawn from all the academic units that are affected by provost activities, all the schools and programs. It should represent faculty facing different opportunities and constraints in their teaching and scholarship (e.g., disciplines with and without external support for their research). It should contain faculty with broad experiences and knowledge about other universities facing issues similar to Georgetown. Hopefully, the Main Campus Executive Faculty could collaborate with me in the appointment process.

Key performance metrics of the advisory committee would be that initiatives considered have faster implementation, wider consensus among faculty and administrators, and more efficacy in their outcomes.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on this idea.