Welcoming a New Provost, in 3 Months or Less

The new president wants a new provost, and fast: Some lessons learned.

Changing academic leadership is risky business, to be sure, and the resulting transitions are not easy – for anyone.

At our own institution, we just made one such change – replacing an academic dean with a provost. After the departure of the academic dean mid-year and the appointment of an interim provost (well-known to the relatively new president), we set about searching for a permanent provost.

The process resulted in both the new provost and the president learning a good deal about how working together from the onset can make these transitions a positive experience – for the existing leadership team, for faculty, for students, for the larger college and local community, and for each other. Of course, we have made our share of mistakes and we are sure we will make more. But, we hope that some of the lessons we learned may be useful to the many other institutions making similar changes.