Goodbye, Provost Daniels.

Congratulations on your selection as Johns Hopkins’ 14th president. This is a very big day for you.

I wish I could say I’d miss you, but I never really knew you. And I wish I could say you seemed like a chill dude, but I’m pretty sure the only time I ever saw you was at my Convocation. I don’t remember what you said; on that day you were overshadowed by President Gutmann’s epic “You only have 43 months until graduation!” speech.

But I can say this, Provost Daniels: You were never scary, or mean, or purposefully unhelpful.

Of course, I also had no idea what you looked like until I googled you ten minutes ago. And I’m not really sure what you do, though that may be in part my fault. I’ll just go ahead and take President Gutmann’s word that you are “a gifted academic leader, a noted scholar, and an energetic collaborator with a passion for excellence.” Oh well.

A search committee is forming as we speak for a new faceless head academic officer at Penn.

Provost Daniels being foreign to me isn’t his fault. Penn is a big place and it’s not explicitly his job to meet students. We students have limited contact with the President, Provost, and other top University officials by design. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

(It is important to know, though, that some top administrators do teach undergrads. In my experience, they are Penn’s finest professors. These teachers are special; it’s not easy to teach on top of one’s fundraising and administrative responsibilities.)

I know fundraising is important; I’ll even concede that it’s a President’s top responsibility. I can’t help thinking, though, that we’d trust our officials more if we saw them more often and had more opportunities to personally interact with them.

How can you run a university if you don’t know what’s going on in students’ heads? Interaction with students is vital to knowing where the University needs to improve. And if the President and Provost came out for more than just photo ops (Get Out The Vote or otherwise), the community would have more trust in them.

I’m not knocking the work President Gutmann and Provost Daniels have done; Penn’s reputation and resources have risen under their watch. I do, however, think that the University would be better served if undergrads received more of an audience with them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 9:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.