Joseph Glover, a mathematician and the final candidate for the provostship at the University of Arizona, is an outlier.
Glover served as provost at the University of Florida for 15 years. The average provost term lasts about five. In his talk to UA faculty, staff and students on Tuesday, Glover faced questions about why he spent so long spearheading academics down in Gainsville. His answer?
“I actually enjoyed the work,” Glover told the crowd. “I really do enjoy being provost.”
Glover stepped down from the provostship at the University of Florida in 2023 to serve as a senior advisor to the university’s new president, former Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse.
Currently, the search to hire a provost, or the chief academic officer, at the UA appears to be between two candidates: Glover and Dean of the College of Communications at Pennsylvania State University Marie Hardin.
Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, the third finalist, dropped out of the search last week after accepting the provostship at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
At his talk on Tuesday, Glover emphasized that one of the reasons he is interested in the UA position is the university’s land grant status and mission.
Land grant universities, established by law in 1862, were initially created to teach agriculture, science and engineering throughout their territories. Now, the universities provide education, research and outreach meant to benefit their communities and address societal needs. The UA is one of 57 land grant universities in the country.
“It is part of your fundamental identity as a university,” Glover said of the land grant mission. “From the knowledge base of different departments and different colleges within the university, you want to take that out into the community and assist the system in a tangible way.”
It’s a “wonderful way” to build relationships with communities, business leaders and lawmakers, he added.
But, he acknowledged, the role of a provost is to focus less on the outside community and other issues going on. If chosen, Glover will be responsible for helming the academic enterprises of the university.
“The primary job of a provost is to come in and make sure that the academic enterprise is flourishing,” he said. “That means ... that students are being well served and that the talented faculty and staff are being retained and appropriately compensated because, in the end, it’s all about talent.”
Glover said his management style is “pretty transparent.”
“I believe in sharing information, having people absorb the information, consult and give feedback and participate in decisions,” he said.
One controversy during Glover’s tenure at the University of Florida was a policy proposal by the state legislature mandating stricter tenure reviews. Tenure is a policy in which professors earn positions on the faculty with protections that make it very hard to fire them.
According to a 2021 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Glover authored a draft policy on the tenure review process, requiring tenured faculty at the University of Florida to undergo a “comprehensive periodic review” every five years to “refocus academic and professional efforts, when appropriate.” Final decisions on whether or not a reviewed faculty member was successful would fall to the provost, who at the time was Glover.
When asked about the controversial policy, Glover said it was the Florida legislature’s decision to implement a new proposal.
“The question is asked, ‘are (professors) adequately appropriately assigning (their) duties?’ “ he said. “If the answer is yes, life goes on. If the answer is no, then oftentimes they are asked to improve with a performance improvement plan.”
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