What makes for a great provost?
JOHN HOPKINS July 31st, 2009
Thoughts on leadership and liberal education, by Grant Cornwell
The sine qua non of successful leadership in a liberal arts college is a profound grasp of the mission. An inspiring Provost will have an abiding passion for liberal learning that springs from deep well of experience as a teacher and a scholar. What is more, the work of the Provost must be approached as service to a noble mission. The value of academic administration is derivative; it matters only because what it serves matters.
Below is a list of qualities I think essential for a Provost:
A Provost must know first-hand the interwoven joys and difficulties of research and scholarship; a Provost must have an intuitive grasp of why smart people choose the life of a professor in a liberal arts college, and work to protect what is most precious about that life; a successful Provost at Wooster will understand and champion the uniquely integrated culture of research at the College, for nowhere does faculty research so intimately inform teaching as it does at Wooster.
A Provost must have a genuine and unshakable respect for faculty and their role in the mission; a Provost must show leadership, respect, support and understanding, and the disposition of a mentor, towards every faculty member on every occasion, even, or especially in instances where there is conflict.
A Provost must love students, and take joy in their liberal education. A Provost should always feel some sense of loss for not being able to spend more time in the classroom.
A Provost should take the duties of the office seriously, but themselves less so. A Provost needs an ego strong enough to have it always in the background.
A Provost needs a ready sense of humor and irony, compassionate warmth towards the human condition in all its variety, and an unwavering commitment to fairness.
A Provost needs a creative, informed, and dynamic vision for liberal learning, and the capacity to recognize the same in others; a Provost should be a source of great ideas, but also an effective facilitator of the great ideas of others.
A Provost at a liberal arts college like Wooster needs to have a clear understanding, informed by experience, that the educational mission includes the academic mission as the center, but extends beyond to include campus life, co-curricular activities, and athletics.
A Provost should be a fair and efficient administrator with an intrinsic dislike of bureaucracy; a Provost needs to be motivated by a drive to get things done, to solve problems, to eliminate barriers; a Provost should have an intuitive proclivity to say “yes” to all good ideas, combined with the capacity to say “no” when necessary, and to do so in ways that are supportive rather than alienating.
Finally, a Provost must be, and be seen as, a good person; a Provost must be someone whose judgment can be trusted, and whose motives are always noble.
