Provost’s Report to the University Senate on Dec. 15, 2021

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

I am writing today to share my remarks to the University Senate from the meeting held on Dec. 15, 2021. Thank you for all that you have done this semester. I wish you a happy holiday break and look forward to working with you in the new year.

Dr. Gretchen Ritter
Vice Chancellor, Provost and Chief Academic Officer


Good afternoon, Senators. Let me begin my remarks this afternoon by noting and celebrating the addition of two new superb leaders to the Academic Affairs team as of Jan. 1.

They are Ryan Williams, vice president for enrollment services, and Jamie Winders, associate provost for faculty affairs. Ryan has served in various leadership roles at the University since 2012 and was named vice president for enrollment services in 2018. Previously, he has held leadership positions in enrollment and financial aid at various institutions and organizations—including the College Board, Boston University, the University of Rochester and Harvard University. He has degrees from Earlham College and from the University of Rochester.

Along with Ryan, Academic Affairs also welcomes the broader teams from Enrollment Management, Financial Aid and the Office of Institutional Research (OIR). The alignment of these units with Academic Affairs will help us to better serve our students, schools and colleges in numerous ways—by, for instance, facilitating greater engagement with the schools and colleges around recruitment and yield efforts, by using analytic approaches to supporting student success beyond the first year, by improving the experience of transfer students and by strengthening our ability to set and achieve appropriate admissions goals at the graduate level.

We are incredibly fortunate to have Ryan and the talented team of skilled professionals who make up Enrollment Management and OIR joining us in Academic Affairs.

Now, with regard to our new associate provost for faculty affairs, let me begin by acknowledging and expressing my thanks to the 19 outstanding candidates from across campus who put their names forward for this position, along with the members of the advisory committee that assisted with the selection process. Many of you are already familiar with Professor Winders from the Department of Geography and the Environment. She is an outstanding scholar and interdisciplinary research leader. She has served as the editor of the International Migration Review—the leading journal in her field. She has also been a much sought-after reviewer for tenure and promotion cases, both internally and externally. Jamie was appointed the inaugural director of the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute, a vibrant interdisciplinary research program that draws faculty and students from across the campus. She has also been an active participant in our shared governance at SU. Jamie has been a member of the University Senate (where she chaired the Research Committee) and she has served as chair of the faculty councils in both the Maxwell School and the College of Arts and Sciences. From 2019-21, she was the faculty representative to the Board of Trustees.

As she comes into her new role next month, Jamie will help take the lead on some of the things that we talked about here recently. She will, for instance, help us to be responsive to the concerns that have been raised about gender pay equity for faculty. Moving that work forward will require examining and addressing several things: how are salaries and merit increases are determined; procedures for periodic reviews of the faculty salary structure; opportunities to appeal perceived salary inequities; and expectations for reporting on all of this to the University Senate. In other areas, I have asked Associate Provost Winders to review and strengthen our programming for the support and training of department chairs. I have also asked her to work with the University Senate and the schools and colleges to review our tenure and promotion processes, to ensure that they are marked by fairness, transparency and high standards for academic excellence. Finally, Jamie will be a key partner in helping the schools and colleges to develop and move forward our plans to advance diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in terms of faculty recruitment, development, promotion and tenure, and retention.

So that is some information on our new leaders in faculty affairs and the work ahead. Another topic I thought I would touch on briefly is the First-Year Seminar, FYS 101. As we wrap up the semester, we will all be looking to see how successful our first foray into this Universitywide venture has been. Putting together this course—for the nearly 4,000 first-year undergraduate students taught in 215 sections—has been a huge effort. The idea behind the course is to help integrate students to the campus, while helping them to understand and appreciate the benefits of diversity, both here at Syracuse and more broadly in the world. A tremendous amount of good work has gone into this course. Given the scale and scope of the effort and the fact that this is the first year that the course has been offered to the whole campus, it is inevitable that there will be things we learn from our assessments of the course that will allow us to revise the way that the course is offered next year. No doubt there are some things that went well and some things that went less well. After all the assessments are in, Associate Provost Chris Johnson will share what we have learned about any concerns that emerged and our plans for addressing those issues when we offer the course again next year.

Let me close by thanking everyone and wishing you a happy holiday break. I know this has been a tiring and challenging semester for our faculty, staff and students given the lingering, seemingly never ending impact of COVID. Collectively this University community has so much to be proud of—under the shadow of COVID, we have stayed focused on prioritizing the health and well-being of all of the people here while staying true to our missions of educational, research and creative excellence.

Along the way, our students, faculty and staff have done extraordinary things. We have a new Marshall Scholar and a new Pickering Fellow. Our faculty are getting significant grants from NSF, NIH, Luce and Mellon. I’d like to congratulate Professor Scott Stevens on the $1.5 million grant to create a Center for Global Indigenous Cultures and Environmental Justice. The accolades that our students and faculty are winning were greatly aided by dedicated and skilled staff—from lab technicians to grant managers to academic advisors. The achievements and commitment of our colleagues should fill us all with great pride. On a personal note, let me share my gratitude to all of you for welcoming me, sharing with me your frank assessments and your good ideas, and joining with me in thinking about how to move this University to even higher levels of excellence. I could not be more pleased to be part of the Syracuse University community.