Over the summer, multiple administrative positions have seen new leadership changes. With a new provost, two deans and two chairs have moved into their positions permanently, but there are still many open positions.
Provost Michael Godard said these openings are largely in part to faculty taking advantage of the Voluntary Retirement Incentive Program (VRIP) instituted last Spring.
“You don’t know who’s going to take advantage of [VRIP] or not, and you don’t know what positions those individuals are going to necessarily be in,” Godard said. “So you end up having these positions in which we say are critical, and as a result, we’re going to have an interim serve.”
Some of the administrative changes made are said to be permanent, according to Godard. Former interim provost Tammy Randolph is now the dean of the College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Former interim dean of STEM Brad Deken became the chair of the College of Engineering and Technology. Daniel Daly will spend this year as the interim chair of mathematics, and Hamner Hill will continue as the dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
These changes are not believed to have a drastic effect on the students, Godard believes.
“I would say for the vast majority of students, they really won’t see much of a change because their relationship is with the faculty. I think that stability really relies on the faculty that [students] engage within the classroom, and that hasn’t been altered at all,” Godard said. “The most important thing for students is the stability with the relationship that they have with their faculty members in those programs and specific areas.”
Godard said while some leaders simply shifted over to a different role, some positions consolidated together to have more “efficiencies of operation.”
An example of this would be the Director of Advanced Placement position. When that position became vacant because of a retirement, Godard and his staff decided to take care of that offices duties with “some other synergies that we have across academic affairs to handle that.”
The consolidation of departments isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as Godard believes it will be beneficial for academic affairs.
“I’m working through a few things right now, how we can kind of look at increased efficiencies in academic affairs. We might look to combine some areas to create more communication and efficiencies,” Godard said. “As we move forward, we’ll be looking at ways in which we can better serve our students and work collaboratively with faculty to find better solutions for that.”
This re-shuffle of personnel partially coincides with the academic reorganization the university went through a year ago.
With Southeast being reorganized into five colleges, a few departments ended up having two chairs when only one was necessary. As a result, faculty were shifted into different positions, leaving some positions vacant and filling others with interim chairs.
“With so many interim positions that have been out there trying to provide a little bit of stability, one of my major goals is to make sure that we get to a point where we can provide some stability with leadership in more permanent roles,” Godard said. ***
One instance where that has already been implemented was by appointing former interim provost Tammy Randolph as the dean of the College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.
“My conversations with [Randolph] indicates that she has found her sweet spot now, being able to serve the faculty and serve the students in the disciplined areas in which she feels most comfortable doing so,” Godard said.
Although not every administrative position is filled, the changes that have been made so far should bring forth more stability for academic affairs, Godard said.
