More elite universities hire female provosts, creating a new pool for presidential openings
At a meeting of the Association of American Universities last fall, five women met up at a reception and went out to dinner.
No big deal, except that all of them were provosts at elite research universities.
ALSO SEE: Female Provosts Weigh Many Factors in Deciding Whether to Seek Presidencies Colloquy Live: A discussion with Susan W. Prager, the provost of Dartmouth College, about the advancement of women into top positions at elite colleges, Wednesday, June 14 at 1 p.m. Eastern time. |
And while networking over pasta may not sound like history in the making, it couldn’t have happened a decade ago.
For, while women have made steady gains in academic administration, most of the progress has been at community colleges, liberal-arts colleges, or institutions on lower rungs of the academic hierarchy.
By midsummer, however, women will be provosts at four of the eight Ivy League colleges, and will hold the chief academic position at a total of 11 of the 61 universities in the A.A.U. Women hold similar jobs at several other prominent institutions as well, including Williams College, the University of California at San Francisco, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, which has set its cap on joining the A.A.U., with Elizabeth Hoffman, the provost, driving the strategy.
These women run the day-to-day operations of some of the most prestigious, complex universities in the country. They oversee budgets, decide which programs will
Female Provosts at Some Prominent Institutions Dates indicate year of appointment. Dorothy F. Bainton, University of California at San Francisco (1994) Nancy E. Cantor, University of Michigan (1997) Elizabeth D. Capaldi, State University of New York at Buffalo (2000) Marsha A. Chandler, University of California at San Diego (1997) Rebecca S. Chopp, Emory University (1998) Carol T. Christ, University of California at Berkeley (1994, returns to the faculty in July) Deborah A. Freund, Syracuse University (1999) Catharine B. Hill, Williams College (1999) Elizabeth Hoffman, University of Illinois at Chicago (1997) Biddy Martin, Cornell University (2000) Ilene H. Nagel, University of California at Santa Barbara (1998) Susan W. Prager, Dartmouth College (1999) Alison F. Richard, Yale University (1994) Lou Anna K. Simon, Michigan State University (1992) Kathryn T. Spoehr, Brown University (1999) SOURCE: Chronicle reporting |
grow or shrink, sign off on faculty hires, advise trustees, and, increasingly, raise big bucks. Their days are a stream of decisions about technology, curricular requests, licensing agreements, construction projects, conflict-of-interest policies. In the words of Nancy E. Cantor, provost at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, “everything in the institution at some time walks through these offices.”
The growing numbers of female provosts, and their many accomplishments, excite experts who predict that elite universities will finally hire more women as presidents.
“We are five or six years away from the floodgates opening up,” says John Kuhnle, managing director of the higher-education practice at Korn/Ferry International, an executive search firm. “If someone gets through three years unmarred by serious controversy, they are poised.”
Observers consider a growing supply of accomplished women -- as well as members of minority groups -- to be particularly important as affirmative action comes under attack. If universities are to maintain their commitment to liberal education, with its encouragement of clashing ideas and pursuit of common ground, diversity is considered crucial.
“It’s really important for these institutions to be diverse and open at every level,” says Ms. Cantor, who has been provost at Michigan since 1997. “It’s important for the vitality of these places and for the ways in which they model opportunity for students and faculty and staff. And, also, it really affects the very nature of the work that goes on in the institutions.”
“The more different life experiences you bring to bear on any decision, policy, or program, the better the intellectual substance of the outcome will be.”
Having more successful women in top jobs also can discourage assumptions based on gender. “The wonderful thing about there being more and more role models out there is that very different kinds of people assume these roles,” says Susan W. Prager, who has been provost at Dartmouth College for 15 months. “People will get more comfortable with the idea that there is not uniformity in approaches to these jobs, and that people succeed in them in very different ways.”
Many elite universities, particularly private ones, didn’t even accept female students or begin hiring female professors in significant numbers until the late 1960’s.
Those were the years when most of the current female provosts earned their Ph.D.'s and found jobs as assistant professors. During the late 70’s, the 80’s, and the early 90’s, they earned tenure, became full professors, and went on to serve as department chairwomen, deans, and in other posts that allowed them to demonstrate their administrative talents. By the mid to late 1990’s, there were enough well- credentialed women in the right kinds of jobs to provide search committees with the pools necessary to name some as provosts.
“For whoever is in one of these positions currently, it’s a function of the past track record of that person and also of just having a pipeline that is becoming a lot more full of women who have the appropriate credentials,” says Lou Anna K. Simon, provost at Michigan State University since 1992. “When there is more than one person to choose from, it makes it easier to say there are multiple choices for a particular position. That’s very important.”
Their ranks have grown only recently. In 1993-94, the year before the A.A.U. began holding special meetings for provosts, only five member institutions had women in that job. By 1996-97, six did. But by next fall, the total will have nearly doubled.
The growing numbers of talented women working their way through the faculty ranks augurs well for the future, says Alison F. Richard, provost at Yale since 1994. “The number of women becoming potential candidates for these positions is growing. That means the leadership in higher education will become increasingly diversified and more closely reflect the composition of our student pools.”
Top research universities have been the slowest to hire women as presidents. Hanna H. Gray was the first, heading the University of Chicago from 1978 to 1993. That year, Nannerl O. Keohane became president of Duke University, followed the next year by Judith Rodin at the University of Pennsylvania. Women also lead a few large public systems -- Katharine C. Lyall at Wisconsin since 1992, and Molly Corbett Broad at North Carolina since 1997.
“A few places have to do it first. That breaks the glass ceiling, or allays the fears and doubts,” says Judith Block McLaughlin, chair of the Harvard Seminar for New Presidents at Harvard University.
“When I began researching searches 20 years ago,” she adds, “I would hear search-committee chairs say, ‘I don’t know if we’re really ready for a woman.’ They would say it to me -- as a woman. I haven’t heard that in years. I think in part it’s because there are women in the pipeline who have distinguished themselves, and also because more institutions have taken on women as presidents.”
Marsha A. Chandler, senior vice chancellor for academic affairs -- a position similar to that of provost -- at the University of California at San Diego, has heard from female graduate students that her presence inspires them. “They say, ‘You seem like a regular person. It’s not so extraordinary what you’re doing.’”
Ms. Keohane adds, “It’s also important for men to see women in positions of power, as they plan their own careers and lives in terms of how they look at the ambitions of their partners and how they look at [female] supervisors and coworkers. They are unlikely to see that as odd.”
Most of the female provosts expressed concern about equity issues, and several worry that members of minority groups seem to have even lower representation on senior faculties and in top administrative posts than women. Several of the provosts say they have tried to ensure that searches for faculty members, deans, and other key posts include qualified women.
Some say they try to have enough flexibility to hire superb young female scholars even when precisely appropriate openings don’t exist. Finding good fits for two-career couples is another challenge.
Ilene H. Nagel, executive vice chancellor -- the chief academic officer -- at the University of California at Santa Barbara says she looks for creative ways to give women administrative experience. Last year, she chose a tenured professor to help with some administrative decisions. “You can hire women into a variety of positions so you broaden their base of experience and give them familiarity with the inner workings of higher education,” she says. “That helps broaden the pipeline.”
Despite such efforts, however, having women in top posts doesn’t automatically guarantee that parity will magically follow, particularly when high-stakes tenure-and-promotion decisions are involved. Several female provosts note that many male administrators, too, push for equity.
Ms. Cantor, of Michigan, says it’s important to remain aware that young female and minority faculty members face particular pressures.
For example, their smaller numbers can mean that they feel pressed to spend more time than male colleagues on tasks like acting as mentors to students -- work that builds community but that also robs time from the scholarship necessary for a bright future of their own.
Some of the female provosts have found themselves on the opposite side of women’s advocates on campus. Condoleezza Rice, provost at Stanford University from 1993 to 1999, drew fire for defending the administration’s denial of tenure to a female historian who had strong backing from her department.
“You can’t just be the provost for women; you have to be provost for the whole academy,” says Ms. Rice, who is on academic leave, working as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
“I think bringing women into the professorate is one of most important things that needs to happen,” she continues, “but there are some hard and fast constraints. With tenure and the absence of mandatory retirement, many positions are pretty locked up.”
“You have the same constraints that male provosts would have. The good news is that the whole professoriate is changing. I look at this as a pyramid. We will see many more women as assistant professors than when we were starting out, many more women getting promoted to tenure, many more women in the senior ranks.”
Several of the women say they and other female administrators at their institutions were hired or promoted by presidents or other key officials who recognized the need for diversity.
For some of the women, their appointment as provost indicates not only institutional open-mindedness in evaluating experience, but also a willingness to take risks. Some have not followed the usual track from department chairwoman to dean to provost.
Others come from a field that few previous provosts would have had in their background: women’s studies.
For example, Biddy Martin, senior associate dean of arts and sciences at Cornell University, who will become provost in July, is a professor of women’s studies as well as German studies. Rebecca S. Chopp, Emory University’s provost, is a feminist theologian. Phillip E. Lewis, Cornell’s dean of arts and sciences and a mentor of Ms. Martin’s, considers her background a plus for the provost’s job. “She has a really lively, broad-ranging mind that results from all the work she has done in women’s studies, which is an interdisciplinary field here,” he says. “She has had contact with people all across this campus.”
Few of the provosts are the sole female standard bearers in the administrations of their institutions. Ms. Richard followed Ms. Rodin and Ms. Gray at Yale. At Brown University, five of the nine vice presidents, as well as the interim president, are women. “It would be faster to name the men,” quips Kathryn T. Spoehr, who has been executive vice president and provost since November. She adds that she and others have worked to ensure that the pool for Brown’s presidency includes several strong women.
To a woman, the provosts discourage gender stereotypes and generalizations, especially when discussing leadership styles, career obstacles, and family responsibilities. The provost’s job is demanding for anyone, they note.
Because provosts have to choose among competing requests for resources, says Carol T. Christ, executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California at Berkeley, one important quality for anyone in the job is “for people to leave your office each feeling like they’re very much still connected to the institution, that they’ve gotten something out of this transaction.”
“You’re always building community, building commitment to a vision of the institution.”
Most important, several of the provosts say, is finding a style that is comfortable and effective in tough situations.
Still, several of them describe themselves as collaborative problem-solvers who are good at juggling many tasks -- traits often ascribed to women. Several also have acute, dry senses of humor -- which, a few of them note, can help to defuse tense situations.
“If a decision needs to be made immediately, I have no trouble,” says Ms. Hoffman, of the University of Illinois at Chicago. “When I have the luxury of taking some time to make a decision, I’d rather consult. Getting buy-in is important when you’re moving that quickly and taking some risks -- getting the whole campus to feel they’re sharing in this exciting thing.”
“I don’t know if this is a female style or not, but I have noticed that I have a different style.”
Sometimes being a woman helps, says Ms. Spoehr, of Brown. “I have a little needlepoint thing I did on my shelf: ‘I can handle any crisis. I’m a mother.’”
While all of the women say presidents are the chief fund raisers on their campuses, several say they enjoy helping to cultivate potential donors. Some gained such expertise in their previous jobs. Ms. Hoffman, for example, raised $27-million while she was dean of liberal arts and sciences at Iowa State University from 1993 to 1997.
The provosts who are married praise their husbands as supportive partners who share fully in child-rearing. Some, like Ms. Rodin and Deborah A. Freund, provost at Syracuse University, waited to have children until they were tenured and established in their careers. Still, Ms. Rodin recalls cutting off a droning discussion at a meeting, when she was a department chairwoman at Yale, in order to pick her son up from preschool.
The women note, however, that academe is getting used to accommodating two-career couples. More men are leaving meetings early to pick up children, and expectations about spousal responsibilities are loosening. Several of the provosts say their husbands, many of whom also are academics, attend those events that interest them and rarely feel pressure to appear at others.
Even with stalwart support at home, the provosts say their jobs are hard, requiring intellectual flexibility and long hours that often stretch into the evening. Several say they regret that their busy days don’t allow as much time to be mentors to other women as they would like.
Some of the provosts also say that women get fewer chances to make mistakes than men, especially during the early months in a top job. Most say the novelty of their gender wears off after a year or two, though, when people stop mentioning the “woman provost” and concentrate on working with her.
Among their accomplishments, Ms. Hoffman takes credit for using creativity and tenacity to find money and vacant lines to hire faculty stars to help raise her institution’s reputation. Ms. Freund, at Syracuse, played a key role in hiring several female faculty members in the sciences this year, including two engineers.
Many of the provosts believe that women no longer have to be super-achievers to succeed. Still, several say they have encountered prejudices, if unconscious ones, during their careers. Some recall being mistaken for the dean’s wife or stopped by the security force for parking in the provost’s spot. Ms. Freund recalls facing resentment as she rose through the ranks, often the only woman involved in an activity. As a result, she says, she’s glad she can point to her strong academic credentials. “It helps me have credibility on campus.”
The provosts say they have had mentors, often men, who have encouraged them throughout their careers, offered specific advice, and given them access to watch how things are done.
Ms. Prager says she learned volumes about fund-raising by watching the former U.C.L.A. chancellor Charles E. Young. “He took people who were devoted to U.C.L.A. for athletics and said, ‘This is for academics,’ and moved them to a level of excitement about academics,” she says. Ms. Christ says that the former Berkeley chancellor Chang-Lin Tien stepped back at times and explained why he was doing things a certain way.
Several of the female provosts at the A.A.U. dinner last fall say they hope to keep in touch with each other. “It’s easy for people in any of these roles to assume that they are the only one who has been in an awkward situation,” says Ms. Simon, of Michigan State. “I have been fortunate to have people to offer good advice and counsel on the front end so I don’t make mistakes. I have a good administrative equivalent of a batting average. If you work in isolation, and feel isolated, you don’t have sense of your batting average. That is the greatest gift that a variety of mentors, men and women, have given.”
Some mentors and faculty colleagues see a potential downside to the provosts’ success: They might be hired away as presidents. The women, naturally, enjoy their success.
“We are getting there,” says Elizabeth D. Capaldi, provost at the University of Florida from 1996 to 1999, who is about to become provost at the State University of New York at Buffalo. “Women are very talented. There isn’t that much administrative talent around. I think it will happen more and more and more.”
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