Over the past three years the Chancellor and I have built the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost to pursue the goals of enhancing our rankings, creating select professional schools, building high-quality graduate programs, and increasing student success. To improve transparency and to communicate how we continue to shape this office to meet these goals, I am providing this update on our strategic vision for this Office. In brief, we want to ensure that this campus has the best possible opportunity to demonstrate that a large and growing public research university can have diversity, research excellence, and student success at the highest levels. We must build an infrastructure appropriate for our aspirations.
Office of Academic Personnel
The Chancellor and I are pleased to announce that Professor Betty Lord has been reappointed as Vice Provost of Academic Personnel for a second term, 2007 – 2009. She has managed the office move to the Surge building and has worked to systematize procedures and practices regarding academic personnel issues. Under Vice Provost Lord’s leadership, the Academic Personnel Office continues to facilitate recruitment, development, and retention of academic employees.
Academic personnel matters were conducted largely in the Provost’s Office prior to the establishment of this position, but because of this investment the campus is already enjoying dividends. In addition to the normal processing of academic files, the Academic Personnel Office has created numerous diversity and pipeline programs; collaborated on a faculty web portal that features a new electronic-personnel filing system (e-file); and instituted crucial development programs including the Tenure Academy, new faculty orientation, and the chairs’ “lunch bunches.”
Office of Undergraduate Education
The Office of Undergraduate Education exists to partner with the undergraduate colleges and deliver programs that engender student success. Over the last two years, Vice Provost Grosovsky has implemented programs that focus on three main areas in the university: learning, teaching, and assessment. Specifically, UCR is building highly coordinated learning programs such as summer bridge, learning communities, supplemental instruction, and an undergraduate research conference. The Office has also instituted a well-attended seminar series—The Scholarship of Teaching—and is in the planning process for a Center for Instructional Innovation. Moreover, the Office is responsible in part for many key assessments and evaluations conducted on campus, including WASC, the on-line course evaluation system, and undergraduate program review procedures. Indeed, the Office of Undergraduate Education is performing many activities that have never been done systematically on this campus.
Vice Provost Grosovsky has done a wonderful job building the Office of Undergraduate Education and has graciously stayed on an extra year. However, his term is rapidly coming to a close. Although we just completed a national search for the next Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education, the Chancellor and I have elected not to choose from the final list of candidates. Instead, in the spring quarter we will begin an internal search to fill this position by the summer.
Office of Conflict Resolution
The Office of Conflict Resolution primarily coordinates mediation programs across the campus, such as Title IX and the ombudsperson. However, because of Vice Provost Yolanda Moses’ concurrent appointment as the Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Excellence and Diversity, her Office also contributes widely to many campus diversity issues. For example, Vice Provost Moses plays a role in WASC—which has diversity as one of its major themes—and has created a series of diversity summits, the most recent of which focused on student success and diversity. Vice Provost Moses has done an outstanding job coordinating the campus’ mediation resources and applying her higher education diversity expertise to create learning opportunities for staff, students, and faculty.
With Vice Provost Moses’ term coming to a close and the recent departure of our long-time ombudsperson, the Chancellor and I have asked Vice Provost Moses to work with campus counsel to look at best practices in higher education and recommend how we can best restructure our campus mediation resources.
Office of Health Affairs
After many years of consideration and a busy year of preparation, last November the Regents voted to support the planning of a medical school at UCR. This has caused me to increase our staffing in order to prepare a full proposal, to shepherd it through the approval process, and to build the initial infrastructure of the Center for Clinical Medical Education. Because of the highly specialized negotiations that must take place with our campus and the region’s heath-care providers, as well as numerous government agencies and other constituencies, the Chancellor and I have elected to create an Office of Health Affairs that will work in cooperation with the founding dean.
The Chancellor and I are pleased to announce that Dr. Kiki Nocella has been named Vice Provost of Health Affairs. Prior to coming to UCR, Dr. Nocella worked as a full-time faculty member of family medicine at the USC Keck School of Medicine, where she was also the Vice Chair of Finance and Administration for her department. Dr. Nocella earned her Ph.D. in Public Administration at USC emphasizing rural recruitment of family physicians and the relationship between residency training program organization and choosing to work in rural and underserved areas. She has also been a consultant for various academic medical centers and regional health systems on the intricacies of graduate medical education financing and residency program design. We are fortunate to have Dr. Nocella serve UCR as we move forward with the medical school.
Office of International Affairs
In October 2005, an International Advisory Committee—comprised of nearly 30 staff and faculty representatives from all pertinent areas of the campus—was created to provide a critique, mission, strategy, and resource plan to fulfill the Chancellor's vision of making UCR a top-ranked, global research university. Their report identified the strengths and weaknesses in our current programs, highlighted the key issues that need to be addressed, recommended a four-part course of action, and devised a general implementation plan. The lynchpin of the implementation plan—fully endorsed by the Academic Senate—is the hiring of an administrator to coordinate campus resources and implement the committee’s plan. Thus, we are pursuing funds during this year’s budget process to hire a half-time Vice Provost of International Affairs and to build an office that can coordinate efforts on campus and strategically build on our strengths in the international arena. |
