May 5, 2005
First of three scheduled provost candidates visits campus
Issues of diversity and interdisciplinary work dominated the discussion when the first of three scheduled candidates for provost visited the campus this week. Susan Prager, Arjay and Frances Fearing Miller Professor of Law and former dean of the School of Law at UCLA, spoke in an open forum to interested faculty, students and staff in the Henry Art Gallery’s auditorium Monday.
Thomas Daniel, the chair of the search committee, introduced Prager and said that the committee had designed the forum to focus on questions from the audience. Prager, therefore, spoke only for about 10 minutes, focusing on the differing roles of public and private educational institutions, which she said had blurred in recent years.
“I think the difference between public and private institutions is overrated,” Prager said. “I think we have to look at individual institutions and what they’re doing.”
Prager cited democratic access with the costs borne collectively by the general population and a sense of public purpose as being the traditional marks of a public institution. But she pointed out that many private institutions have a sense of public purpose and — through liberal use of financial aid — provide an education at a cost not so much greater than at public institutions — particularly now.
“At a time when our funding is down and our expenses are up, public institutions need to find ways to compensate,” Prager said. “We must be careful we don’t end up with the worst of both worlds.”
Both diversity and interdisciplinary work came up early in the question and answer period.
Prager declared that diversity “is a very important issue to me in a personal sense.” She explained that as dean of UCLA’s law school, she was the first dean to be able to point to the successes of diversity, such as that of an African American woman graduate’s ascension to the bench, where she sentenced a slum landlord to live in his own building.
Commenting on the initiatives in both California and Washington that have abolished racial preference in admissions, she said that institutions are being “required to pioneer a different way (of achieving diversity),” and speculated that this might be a good thing because it will “force us to get down and do the harder work.”
Prager also talked at length about interdisciplinary work, saying first that she was impressed with how far the UW has come in this area and noting that this was not the case when she was provost at Dartmouth, where territoriality often got in the way. She gave an example of engineering faculty being rebuffed in efforts to help Arts and Sciences with science teaching.
“There are financial issues, of course,” Prager said. “So I think we ought to have central pots of money that would compensate a faculty member’s department if he or she went to teach in another department.”
She added that people in the foundation world are interested in breaking down disciplinary boundaries, making money available for these kinds of efforts.
Asked specifically about UW challenges, Prager said the next provost would need to “figure out how to help foster greater achievement in fields that have not historically been your strengths.”
She also said the institution needs a longer-term vision about the future of UW Tacoma and UW Bothell. “I’m concerned that more and more students are wanting to come to the University, and you can’t maintain excellence with too many students. With the new campuses come new opportunities,” she said.
Prager said that as provost she would first do a lot of listening to see what needs to be attended to, then invest time being a teacher and mentor to key people, to help them drive the institution forward.
But she ended her remarks with the comment that growing funds is the biggest challenge for the UW, noting that the University’s successful research program makes fund raising easier.
In addition to the public forum, Prager met with groups of University leaders in her day and a half on campus, Daniel said. Two other provost candidates will visit next week. The three were chosen from 11 candidates who were interviewed off campus. Those 11 were in turn chosen from 59 who had expressed interest. Other candidates may be brought in for visits later, Daniel said.
Public forums are scheduled for the other two candidates; both will be at 3:30 p.m. in the Henry Gallery Auditorium. The forum for Kristina Johnson, professor of electrical and computer engineering and dean of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, will be on Monday, May 9; the forum for Phyllis Wise, distinguished professor of neurobiology and dean of the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Davis, will be on Wednesday, May 11.
Comments about the candidates or the search should be sent to uwsearch@u.washington.edu.
