Title: Restructuring Leads to Appointment of Three New Vice Provosts
Georgetown names three faculty members to new vice provost positions created as part of the restructuring within the provost’s office.
Janet Mann
After announcing efforts torestructure his office earlier this year, Georgetown Provost Robert Groves has created three new vice provost positions to focus on undergraduate and graduate education, research and faculty retention and recruitment.
The provost has named Randall Bass as vice provost for education, Adriana Kugler as vice provost for faculty and Janet Mann as vice provost for research.
“By reflecting the views of the faculty more directly at the provost’s decision table, I hope to provide better leadership to the campus,” Groves said in a letter to the university community regarding the restructuring. “These three new faculty-based positions are an effort to improve communication between the provost’s office and faculty.”
The restructuring comes as Groves, who joined Georgetown as provost nearly a year ago, works to meet several academic goals, which include:
Increasing the impact of research activity at the university, which is compatible with increasing research experiences for undergraduate and graduate students and with strengthening graduate programs.
Enhancing the academic programs by forming new collaborations between the provost’s office and other operating units at the Georgetown
Striving to use program and administrative data gathered from internal units at the university to guide decisions.
Fostering Faculty-Based Leadership
As the vice provost for research, Mann will implement changes to make it easier for faculty to explore research projects.
“I’m looking forward to finding ways to both foster and better reward faculty for excellence in scholarship,” said Mann, a professor of biology and psychology.
Mann will continue to conduct her own dolphin and marine life research and collaborate with colleagues here and abroad, but her vice provost role will allow her to support and stimulate faculty research more broadly, she said.
Randall Bass
“As part of the faculty, I am particularly motivated to nurture structural changes that allow us to focus more on scholarship and less on administrative tasks,” she said. “I’m also looking forward to expanding and elevating graduate and undergraduate research as part of our overall enterprise.”
Bass, who is also a professor of English and previously served as executive director of Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, will focus on both undergraduate and graduate programs as vice provost of education, with a special attention to integrating the two parts of Georgetown’s educational mission – fostering new interdisciplinary programs and guiding evaluation of existing programs.
Bass has been working at the intersections of new media technologies and the scholarship of teaching and learning for two decades.
As vice provost for faculty, Kugler will focus on leading efforts to aid schools in recruiting world-class scholars and teachers, with special attention to fostering joint appointments with other Georgetown campuses and other institutions.
“I look forward to working with our current faculty at all levels in providing services and resources that will help them in their research and teaching,” said Kugler, who also is a professor of public policy and co-director of the Summer Institute in International Program Evaluation. “I am also looking forward in working to recruit, hire and retain top faculty to Georgetown.”
Each of the new vice provosts partially will continue in their roles as faculty members and, at most, complete two three-year terms.
Additional Positions
Adriana Kugler
In addition to the vice provost positions, Groves has created two other positions for the office.
Darryl Christmon is the new chief operating officer for Main Campus. Christmon oversees and helps integrate resources across university services units and the Main Campus academic units and will work jointly with Chris Augostini, the university’s chief operating officer.
The office also has plans for a vice president for finance and program analytics who will oversee the Main Campus finance office, as well as the Office of Assessment and Decision Support (OADS).
“By integrating cost data and program data, we hope to provide schools with better intelligence about the efficiency of their academic programs,” Groves said. “By continuously analyzing the data, we seek to improve the service the provost’s office provides to deans, program directors, faculty and students.”