Dear Chancellor Mark Emmert,
I’m writing today because I am very concerned about how you will pick our next provost. I understand you have the sole and final decision about who will be the University’s next chief academic administrator, even though you’ll gather input from multiple groups. Still, I worry about the input off of which you will base your decision.
To me, a provost should be someone who is confident in his or her abilities as a leader on campus. Our next provost should share your same vision for taking LSU to the next level and truly establishing it as a nationally recognized Research I University and flagship school. Of course, this person should be willing to step in and continue where Provost Daniel Fogel left off in planning the revisions to Faculty Senate’s Policy Statement 36 (the University document that deals with employee appointment, promotion and tenure). However, I think the most important quality our next provost must possess is a good attitude about his or her involvement with students.
To be honest, Chancellor Emmert, I am really scared about how in tune our next provost will be with the students. The provost is the person who enforces Academic Affairs’ strategic plans for the University. On its Web site, the first point in those plans deals with student life — faculty life isn’t mentioned until the fourth point. And even in simple day-to-day tasks, the provost will have to be aware of student needs. For example, the provost decided last semester how students would have to make up for the days we missed after the hurricanes.
I guess what I am trying to say, is I hope you weigh the candidates interaction with students very heavily in your decision on who our next provost will be, because I strongly feel someone without a connection to the students cannot effectively make decisions that affect the 30,000 students at LSU.
Sincerely,
Tracy Simoneaux
Reveille Editor and a concerned mass communication junior
P.S. After all that fuss about your salary, The Reveille opinion editor Christina Stephens also wants to know how much do you plan to pay this new provost?
After attending one of the open forums for the community to question the five provost candidates this week, I decided someone needed to make sure Emmert understood how important student concerns are in his decision. Being the only student at that forum besides a Reveille reporter, I walked out of the auditorium feeling as if no one cared about whether or not this candidate even liked people in their 20s. No one but me questioned this candidate about how she would interact with students.
However, I later learned the five candidates have in fact met with members of Student Government. But they were allowed less than 30 minutes to question the candidates — an amount of time Student Senate Speaker Jay Buller said is not enough to really focus on student issues. These students will recommend a candidate to Emmert, but I’m still skeptical. I’m sure SG will do its best job to represent the entire student body, but why can’t the average college student have some input?
Within the next few weeks, Emmert will decide who to hire. Next Wednesday, he meets with members of the search committee responsible for collecting input about these candidates. I’ve already voiced my concerns about hiring a provost who is only interested in faculty and research advancement to one of the two students on that committee. I’d encourage anyone else who would really hate to see the position filled by just some national-rankings lover (not to say any of the five candidates are), to do the same. I’d even encourage students to e-mail Emmert directly if they’d like to influence his decision on who he should bring back to campus for a second visit.