Provost

Big changes, familiar faces

lblouin — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 12:08:32 +0000

Big changes, familiar faces lblouin Mon, 06/30/2025 - 08:08

When Santa Ono announced on Sunday, May 4 that he was stepping down as president of the University of Michigan, it came as a surprise to most. Even fewer people would have predicted the cascade of leadership changes that would roll through ��-Dearborn in the coming days. By Wednesday that week, ��-Dearborn Chancellor Domenico Grasso had been tapped to serve as U-M's interim president, which prompted Grasso to schedule a conversation with ��-Dearborn Provost Gabriella Scarlatta. At that meeting, Scarlatta recalls Grasso matter-of-factly informing her that he’d “like (her) to be interim chancellor.” For a split second, Scarlatta says she wasn’t sure she felt ready. “Of course, I was shocked. But then I got taken over by incredible pride, knowing that our chancellor was going to be president,” she says. “This is only good for Dearborn. So, of course, I’m going to do it. It’s going to put us on the map.”

Scarlatta’s move to interim chancellor set off a wave of leadership changes. Shortly after her conversation with Grasso, she called College of Engineering and Computer Science Dean Ghassan Kridli, who was en route to his son-in-law’s medical school graduation at Wayne State University, to ask him to take over as interim provost. Kridli said ‘yes,’ which left a vacancy at the top of CECS. Armen Zakarian, vice provost for research and dean of graduate studies, stepped up to take that spot, after which Joan Remski, associate provost for faculty development and digital learning, was asked to fill Zakarian’s role. Stein Brunvand, associate dean and director of graduate programs for the College of Education, Health and Human Services, agreed to step into Remski’s position, with Professor of Education Susan Everett filling Brunvand’s post. Then, in another twist, Vice Chancellor for External Relations Ken Kettenbeil shared that he would be going to Ann Arbor as well, to serve as a senior advisor for Grasso’s interim term. Casandra Ulbrich, vice chancellor for institutional advancement, raised her hand to temporarily head ER, while continuing in her current role. And Director of Marketing and Digital Strategy Bailey Ayers-Korpal and Director of Communications Kristin Palm took on additional responsibilities in ER. Rima Berry-Hung, senior director of human resources, also assumed additional duties as senior advisor to the chancellor, along with her current role.

On paper, that sounds like a lot of leadership churn. But both Kridli and Scarlatta say that everything has gone very smoothly thus far — something they attribute to the fact that everyone in the ��-Dearborn leadership team is very used to working together. They both cheekily pointed out that neither one of them had to get a new boss. “I’m happy and proud that we can handle this internally, and I think it says a lot that everyone essentially said, ‘Yes, of course, for Dearborn,’” Scarlatta says. “So we’re all helping each other and cheering for each other. Plus, we’re all thinking, it’s only for a year, so we can all do it.”

Scarlatta says the current plan is that everyone will return to their previous roles once a new chancellor is named and that the transition would likely happen in spring or summer 2026. She adds that she intends to give her next 11 months or so on the job everything she’s got. In some ways, she says the chancellor’s role is taking her out of her comfort zone. In particular, she notes how “external facing and Ann Arbor facing” her new position is compared to the provost’s. She’s now the one attending weekly leadership meetings in Ann Arbor, communicating with the regents and flying across the country to meet with alumni and donors. On campus, she’s bringing her highly collaborative style to the senior leadership meetings and plans to continue her “Walk and Talk” events so anyone from the campus community can share ideas directly with her. Scarlatta says she’s frankly been a little surprised by how much the new role seems to suit her, given how much she enjoyed the more behind-the-scenes vibe as provost.

Scarlatta and Kridli also know that sitting back and simply keeping the trains running on time until the next chancellor arrives isn’t really an option. The current national political environment has created a swirl of unpredictability in higher education on a variety of fronts. Right now, Scarlatta and Kridli are particularly attentive to cuts to federal research funding and the challenges facing international students. “We worked for years to obtain R2 status, and now we’re there. So how do we sustain that as NSF funding is being slashed?” Kridli says. “It’s also an issue of faculty morale. They’re working hard but maybe they’re not able to get the results they expected. So we need to be thinking about a different paradigm and figure out how to evaluate and reward them given this new environment. They’re not going to be punished because of politics — absolutely not.” In practice, Scarlatta and Kridli say that means things like supporting faculty if they need to pivot to a different research focus, which can take time. Or helping them find other ways they can use their expertise to make an impact, say, through community partnerships. “The question we can be asking ourselves is, how do we advance the reputation and standing of ��-Dearborn?” Kridli says. “And we can do it through published research, foundations, industry and community partnerships, and staying open to other approaches. The important thing is we make an impact.”

Scarlatta says, at least at the moment, international students, who make up approximately 10% of the student population at ��-Dearborn, have reason to be a bit more optimistic. In May, the Trump administration halted scheduling new visa interviews for international students. But recently, the administration reopened the process, albeit with new requirements that students must undergo reviews of their social media accounts. Scarlatta says her team isn’t taking anything for granted. Earlier this spring, the university began reaching out to international students to provide extra support, proactively informing them of changing federal policies and visa deadlines, as well as granting automatic deferment for students who aren’t able to get their paperwork in order by the start of the fall semester. Fortunately, Kridli says a recent survey revealed that the vast majority of respondents are still moving forward with their plans to study at ��-Dearborn in 2025-26. Kridli and Scarlatta say it will also be a priority to make sure both international students and domestic students, say, from immigrant communities, who might feel uneasy in the current political environment, feel at home on campus. “We should not tolerate aggression against anybody. We are all human beings first,” Kridli says. “There is a lot that feels beyond our control. But we control who we are and how we are with each other.”

Even if the politics were more hospitable, Scarlatta and Kridli say they would still have their hands full this year. The colleges are in the midst of a major initiative to expand online programs. The regents recently approved an expansion of the Go Blue Guarantee, which, along with other aid programs, would mean that 94% of ��-Dearborn undergraduate FTIAC students will receive enough aid that their remaining obligations, commonly met through loans or work-study, are less than $2,000 a year. And Kridli says every college needs to make preparations for the ever-expanding influence of artificial intelligence, which is rapidly reshaping the job market, particularly for entry-level positions sought by college graduates.

Given all this, Scarlatta and Kridli both think the ��-Dearborn community is fortunate to have a team of people at the helm who are caring and capable, know each other well, enjoy working together and remain committed to Grasso’s philosophy of “mission first, people always.” And, like many on campus, they are celebrating having the first ��-Dearborn chancellor in the president's office.

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Story by Lou Blouin

Administration & Governance

Off

Mon, 06/30/2025 - 12:06

Interim Chancellor Gabriella Scarlatta and Interim Provost Ghassan Kridli talk about the whirlwind of leadership changes at ��-Dearborn this spring and why the transition has been mostly smooth sailing.

In May, Gabriella Scarlatta (left) was named interim chancellor and Ghassan Kridli was named interim provost at ��-Dearborn.

News

HLC report: ��-Dearborn educates students to meet 21st-century challenges

stuxbury — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 16:59:28 +0000

HLC report: ��-Dearborn educates students to meet 21st-century challenges stuxbury Mon, 12/11/2023 - 11:59

For the first time in known university history, the Higher Learning Commission says ��-Dearborn met or exceeded all criteria for reaccreditation without any additional steps needed. HLC is a federally recognized agency that conducts a comprehensive evaluation of academic institutions.

The final report, which was shared with the ��-Dearborn HLC Core Committee in late November, is expected to be approved at a 2024 Institutional Actions Council meeting. ��-Dearborn will be up for reaccreditation again in 2033.

The review findings were based on extensive documentation, interviews with members of the university community, and in-person conversations with stakeholders across the campus.

“We’ve been accredited through HLC since 1970. If all goes well, there’s a 10-year period before an institution is reevaluated. To my knowledge, this full clean bill of health is the first time it has happened here,” says Associate Provost for Undergraduate Programs and Integrative Learning Mitchel Sollenberger, who led the university’s reaccreditation process. “We’ve always done great things, but much of the strategy or documentation HLC wanted on those earlier visits was non-existent. Looking back through the paper archive in the Provost’s office, we’ve always had additional steps to do. For example, in 1993, we needed to write yearly reports to HLC as a stipulation to maintain accreditation.”

So what changed? Sollenberger, who’s been on the HLC preparation team since the 2013 HLC visit, says faculty and staff have put systems and processes in place over the past decade to capture data, assess programs and document outcomes. “We’ve had many people make great efforts to improve processes even in the face of less-than-ideal circumstances like budgetary constraints, the pandemic and more. Their work helped us get to this point,” he says. “I want to say thank you.”

Also, the HLC reviewers noted that the university went through an intensive strategic planning process starting in 2018. The 60-page final HLC report notes that ��-Dearborn’s direction is guided by the GO BLUEprint for Success Strategic Plan, a university-wide initiative that began with a strength and weakness situational analysis.

While on campus this November, HLC reviewers noticed students building rockets and cars for competitions. They also saw faculty members, assisted by students, working on a variety of research projects. And they talked to students, staff and faculty about community-engaged courses. “The curriculum and co-curriculum at ��-Dearborn educate students to meet 21st-century challenges,” the report states.

HLC reviewers were also impressed by the dedication of faculty and staff to ��-Dearborn’s mission of excellence in teaching, learning, research and scholarship, as well as access, affordability and community impact.

Reviewers singled out the strong culture of community and mutual respect on campus as well. “Caring for everyone in the campus community is central to ��-Dearborn's mission and it was clear from meetings with administration, faculty, staff, and students that they take this very seriously.” One reviewer, when reflecting on the intentional work done to support underserved and underrepresented students, even told administrators that they would like to work at ��-Dearborn.

To demonstrate how ��-Dearborn outcomes match the mission, the HLC report includes these numbers:

Due to a financial aid model based on need rather than merit, 90% of students have their financial needs met with no more than $2,000 in loans or work study
The four-year completion rate has increased from 22% to 37% in the last four years
24% of faculty received external research funding, and from 2018 to 2022, ��-Dearborn's faculty research awards more than doubled with the federal component rising from 35% to 65%

Director of Academic Success Jess LaGrange, who was on ��-Dearborn’s HLC Core Committee, says she is grateful that an external accreditation agency sees how the campus community works tirelessly to do what’s best for ��-Dearborn students.

The work referenced in the report includes the SURE program, Wolverine Mentor Collective, PALS, Salesforce, transparent financial practices, Degree Works, Dearborn Discovery Core, the START office, career coaching, accessible study abroad opportunities, Dearborn Support, project-based learning courses, the Campus Climate Survey and more.

“We are doing so much that every day can feel like a sprint. We often don’t have the time to stop and take stock of the great things we are doing,” LaGrange says. “So it is nice to have HLC come in and say, ‘Wow, you are doing a lot of amazing work and here is the impact of these great things. Keep it up. What you are doing matters.’”

HLC Coordination Team members are Sollenberger, LaGrange, Assistant Dean for Assessment and Accreditation Susan Everett, Financial Services Director Noel Hornbacher, Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness Director Rick Michalski and History Professor Pam Pennock. For helping get the systems needed in place, Sollenberger also would like to thank retired provost Kate Davy and former CEHHS associate dean Laura Reynolds.

Article by Sarah Tuxbury

Off

Mon, 12/11/2023 - 16:58

For the first time in known university history, the Higher Learning Commission says ��-Dearborn met or exceeded all criteria for reaccreditation without any additional steps needed.

News

Connecting campus with community

stuxbury — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 19:00:20 +0000

Connecting campus with community stuxbury Mon, 10/23/2023 - 15:00

When Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Lei Chen wanted to explore pursuing a National Science Foundation funding opportunity with the nonprofit Code 313, ��-Dearborn’s Office of Community-Engaged Learning helped him establish a relationship with the Detroit-based STEAM education organization.

When Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Amanda Esquivel drafted a proposal to the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Teachers, OCEL helped her secure letters of support from local schools.

And when Assistant Professor of Human Services Finn Bell was planning a practice-based learning course on program planning, implementation and evaluation, OCEL staff helped him connect to community partners, including ACCESS and the City of Dearborn Public Health Department. OCEL then met with Bell and the partners over the summer and also led a discussion with Bell’s class on best practices for working in local communities and assuring mutual benefit.

If you feel like you’ve just started hearing about the Office of Community Engaged Learning, you’re right. Until recently, it was known as the Office of Metropolitan Impact. The new name reflects a decade of evolution and a refined focus, says Molly Manley, OCEL’s outreach and engagement specialist.

“When we were founded, our charge was to figure out how to engage in and with the community – what are the best practices and what should we be focusing on? And it was kind of up to us to figure it out,” says Manley, a ��-Dearborn alum who has worked in the office since it formed in 2011, beginning as an AmeriCorps staff member. The first few years were spent streamlining community outreach efforts across the university, working to develop a common perspective on ��-Dearborn’s approach to community work, and securing the Carnegie Foundation’s Community Engagement classification, which is regarded by many as the highest form of recognition for community engagement among colleges and universities in the U.S. ��-Dearborn was awarded the classification in 2015 and is currently preparing for reclassification in 2026.

Historically, both in metro Detroit and nationwide, many community members working with their local universities have raised concerns that research and community-based projects were not developed in concert with residents or did not have tangible benefits for them, Manley explains. “We’re there to make sure when we have a project we want to do, it’s in partnership with the community and we’re willing to make adjustments and compromises to make sure not only are community needs being met, but our students and our faculty are also able to meet their needs,” she says.

OCEL had to try different things in order to land on the approach to community-engaged work that was right for the ��-Dearborn campus, Manley explains. In January 2022, OCEL was moved to the Provost’s Office. After a summer of strategic planning, Manley and Elspeth Muzzin, OCEL’s engagement strategist, workshopped the office’s new name and identified focus areas for their work. One of those involves supporting student success by increasing the number of PBL courses and engaged-research opportunities, as well as continuing to support internships and student employment. Another is supporting faculty research and service. This includes working closely with faculty who are doing community-based work and providing professional development on community-engaged practices. OCEL’s goal is to ease the burden on faculty and make it easier for them to focus on the “learning” portion of practice-based learning.

“Our philosophy is that we can go into the classroom, and we can help show the students how to engage with partners in the best way and help ensure they learn about how to begin and maintain relationships, reflect on community perspective and recognize that community members and organizations are experts in understanding their communities and their neighborhoods’ needs best. Then the faculty can trust the students to manage that relationship,” Manley explains.

The end goal is making projects and coursework even more meaningful. “Instead of just managing logistics and managing projects, faculty can actually help students with their content, and the expertise area that they're teaching them,” Manley explains.

Manley and Muzzin are also in the process of developing online tools. They are working on a Canvas-based toolkit with helpful resources. “It's set up like a professional development course,” Manley explains. “There's modules with different topics. And it's all focused on community engagement, engaging for research, engaging for coursework. We have things in here to help faculty with troubleshooting, to help them with planning.” They are also building out a robust database, known as Collaboratory, for tracking community-engaged projects, with the goal to enhance knowledge of what is happening across campus and spur greater collaboration within and across disciplines.

OCEL will continue to work closely with other units on campus as well, including helping all departments and units with the community engagement sections of grant proposals. They will be deepening their partnership with the Environmental Interpretive Center, which is now also housed in the Provost’s Office. At the same time, OCEL is handing over some previous responsibilities in the interest of not duplicating efforts. For example, Enrollment Management will now be the go-to unit for K-12 partnerships. For business and industry connections, that’s Institutional Advancement.

Even with all these resources, Manley and Muzzin recognize sometimes faculty will just need some face time. Faculty are welcome to set up an appointment with either one of the staff or attend one of their office hours. “Every situation is different,” Manley acknowledges. “We're always available for one-on-one consulting.”

Article by Kristin Palm

Volunteer or Community Service

Provost

Off

Mon, 10/23/2023 - 18:59

The Office of Community-Engaged Learning, formerly OMI, is refocusing its efforts, with an emphasis on supporting faculty in practice-based work.

OCEL staff Molly Manley, left, and Elspeth Muzzin are ready to assist with community-engaged projects. They can meet virtually or at their office in the Mardigian Library’s Ford Collaboratory. Photo/Preston Welborne

News

Practice-based learning takes center stage

lblouin — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 16:19:01 +0000

Practice-based learning takes center stage lblouin Thu, 08/10/2023 - 12:19

It’d be difficult for Assistant Professor of Communication Margaret Murray to pick her favorite from among the podcast pilot episodes her students produced during the debut semester of the Exploration in Storytelling course. There was “Spark,” produced by student Carley Wehab, about the twisting journeys people take to find their careers. Students Mouminah Sadah and Reem Alsomairi teamed up for a show exploring what it means to be hijabi, including how they’ve personally dealt with discrimination. Murray’s students were legitimately wowed by the offbeat comedy show produced by Channing Smith, in which he did all the characters’ voices for a mock self-help call-in radio show. And “What the Dunk,” a podcast about weird NBA conspiracy theories, would definitely make Murray’s short list, even though she couldn’t care less about basketball.

Producing these podcast pilots wasn’t just a course project. In large part, it was the course. There weren’t any exams or quizzes, and the vast majority of students’ class time was spent learning core skills, like how to structure a narrative, use audio equipment, interview people, write scripts and edit using Adobe Audition. Outside of class, homework assignments consisted of things like listening to a range of podcasts to get a feel for the genre. But otherwise, Murray says the students pretty much just went for it. Part of the way through the course, they had to turn in a draft episode, peer review a draft for a classmate and get feedback of their own — all leading up to producing a final episode and a short marketing trailer. “We graded the quality of the feedback they gave during their peer review, and graded the trailer and the final, but that was pretty much it,” Murray says. “I mean, they did a ton of work: They had to do a lot of writing, reviewing, storyboarding, editing, but their entire grade was basically just the project.”

Assistant Professor Margaret Murray. Photo by Julianne Lindsey

The class, which Murray co-taught with Journalism Professor Tim Kiska, producer and host of the popular “Detroit History Podcast,” was their first official experiment in practice-based learning, or PBL, an initiative that ��-Dearborn has been rolling out across the four colleges for the past year-plus. Even PBL advocates admit that the term can be a bit difficult to define, and Associate Professor of Political Science Emily Luxon, who’s been helping with the rollout, says ��-Dearborn has intentionally taken a flexible approach. At the university, the “P” in PBL can actually stand for “practice,” “project,” “problem” and even one “C” — “case” — to give faculty some latitude in organizing their PBL courses in ways that work best for their disciplines. But whatever the format, the core idea is that learning has a different texture when you’re actively solving a challenge that, one, connects to the world outside the classroom, and, two, doesn’t have a preordained path to the finish line. The former aims to embed learning with a new kind of relevance — both in terms of the students’ eventual careers and their personal interests, as the subject matter for specific projects is often left up to the student. And having to accomplish a somewhat ambiguous goal — like “make a podcast” — means students have to learn, synthesize and apply a wide variety of information and skills. It’s certainly a much different educational experience than memorizing definitions for a multiple choice test or even a blue book exam, which Luxon says often is ultimately just measuring whether a student can “show that they can tell you what you told them in the same language you used.” “There are other ways to get at understanding than to tell me what I said in your own words,” Luxon says. “Students are better able to have understanding if they can integrate it into their own way of thinking.”

Across ��-Dearborn’s four colleges, PBL is taking all kinds of interesting shapes. In the College of Business’ Bloomberg Lab, students are managing a real stock portfolio with real money that routinely outperforms the major stock indexes. In the College of Engineering and Computer Science, Assistant Professor Fred Feng is jazzing up his potentially dry-sounding Applied Statistical Models in Engineering course by having the students build models that analyze actual data from a real phenomenon of their choosing. Since it’s the modeling techniques he’s interested in students learning, their projects don’t even have to be engineering-related. In the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters, students in Provost and French Professor Gabriella Scarlatta’s translation course will be partnering with organizations to translate materials for their constituents — a vital service that’s often cost prohibitive for smaller organizations. And in the College of Education, Health, and Human Services, Associate Professor Natalie Sampson jokes that her department “was PBL before it was PBL.” For six years, students in her Community Organizing course have been actively collaborating on projects with partner organizations, like the Dearborn Health Department and local schools, to complement their coursework on the different theories of social change and the history of social movements.

As part of a practice-based learning course, Mapping Unequal Environments in the Motor City, Sociology Professor Paul Draus and Geology Professor Jacob Napieralski took students off campus to learn about inequity in Detroit. This included a visit to AGI Construction, a minority-owned general contractor and project management firm in Southwest Detroit. In this photo, Tanya Saldivar-Ali, AGI co-founder and Southwest Detroit native, talked with students about the company’s challenges, accomplishments and sustainability goals. Photo by Jacob Napieralski

One of the defining qualities of PBL is that it tends to disrupt the usual hierarchy between theory and practice. For example, Murray says students typically wouldn’t have an applied learning experience like this until their junior or senior year, because the conventional wisdom has always been that students needed to spend a couple years learning a bunch of background knowledge, and maybe even pick a career path, before they’d be ready for a big applied project. But the students in Murray’s class are mostly first-semester first-year students. “They don’t have a strong idea of what it means to be at a university, and right off the bat, they get to do this really cool project that they can then put on their LinkedIn or their social media,” she says. “Personally, I think the university is really smart for pushing this, given today’s retention challenges. Imagine your first year of classes is all ‘read this textbook, take this test, memorize, prove to me you understand this.’ I think it’d be easy for a lot of students to just say, ‘this isn’t for me.’”

Making learning more engaging and effective is certainly a big part of ��-Dearborn’s rationale for integrating PBL into the student experience. But Scarlatta says it’s also about being more explicit with students about how what they’re learning — and what they’re paying for — connects with their lives and career aspirations. “Today, they’re hearing that you don’t need a college education anymore, or maybe you only need the first two years, or stories of people starting companies who never went to college,” she says. “But unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way for everybody. For our students, the vast majority of whom don’t come from privileged backgrounds, we are their gateway to building the skills and social networks that will lead them to success. So we have to make a better argument for the value of higher education. And by linking the theory to the world outside the classroom, it’s so much easier for them to see it, because they get to
live it.”

Interestingly, for something potentially transformative, the rollout of PBL at ��-Dearborn has had a somewhat slow and steady feel to it. That’s by design, according to Scarlatta and Luxon. As places built around enthusiasm for big ideas, universities can no doubt be susceptible to big top-down initiatives. Instead, ��-Dearborn is attempting a more organic, grassroots approach with PBL. Rather than, say, requiring all classes to switch to PBL formats, or even classes to have at least one PBL assignment, the university is counting on early adopters to grow the PBL culture through experimentation at the college level. To support that effort, the administration has sent dozens of ��-Dearborn faculty to train with faculty and staff at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, an engineering and technology-focused university in Massachusetts that’s been a leader in PBL. Faculty have also started informal resource groups and hosted “PBL Palooza” events so they can candidly learn from each other’s successes and failures. And the Provost’s office recently announced this year’s Provost Fellow would focus on coordinating the next phase of PBL at ��-Dearborn.

“Right now, we’re seeing this initial step, where people are linking up with each other and with resources, mostly via word of mouth,” Luxon says. “And that’s setting us up to take the next big step. Is it a central repository where faculty can get resources for PBL, or someone with an eagle-eye view to link people up? What would that look like? Where would it live? Those are difficult questions. But it’s exciting because we’re building it ourselves, and doing some trial and error and figuring out the best way to do this on our campus, for our students. It’s become a campus project — to do projects.”

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Story by Lou Blouin

Student Success

University-wide

College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters

College of Business

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Provost

Off

Thu, 08/10/2023 - 16:18

While lectures, exams and essays aren’t disappearing from the university experience, ��-Dearborn is adding more project-based learning to make education more interesting and effective.

Students Talal Tabbara (left) and Adam Bergen hit the studio during the Exploration in Storytelling course, in which they basically had one assignment: Make a podcast. Photo by Julianne Lindsey

News

Provost Catherine Davy reflects on her decade at ��-Dearborn

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 18:13:25 +0000

Provost Catherine Davy reflects on her decade at ��-Dearborn Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/18/2022 - 14:13

This article was originally published on November 21, 2019.

Chatting in her office, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Catherine (Kate) Davy reflects on her 35-plus years in higher education administration and the people who advised her along the way.

Comedian George Burns — there’s a photo of them together on her desk — taught Davy an important lesson about successful people when she interviewed him for a graduate school assignment that became her first publication. She also talks about Sister Irenaeus, a Catholic nun and Davy’s high school’s drama and English teacher who Davy credits for changing the trajectory of her life by encouraging her to go to college; Davy was the first in her working class family to do so. And there are others — Davy mentions them by name, but there are too many to list here — whose advice or support helped her along her journey.

Having served for a decade, Davy is stepping down as ��-Dearborn’s provost after leading ��-Dearborn campus initiatives like the Talent Gateway, START first-year advising, the IDEA Lab, the formation of the College of Education, Health, and Human Services, and the Dearborn Discovery Core.

Davy’s reputation is as a change-agent. Even when closing this chapter of her life, Davy continues to promote education. She’s encouraged faculty to take books from her floor-to-ceiling office shelves and she’s speaking to students at Fall 2019 commencement. She will spend the coming year writing a memoir of higher education to make a case for the extraordinary value of regional campuses and small liberal arts colleges to the students they serve.

She’s often been told that she makes her points through personal stories, anecdotes and analogies. So, before she begins her next chapter, Davy shares various a-ha moments she’s had in during her career in the hope others might find them useful.

Nothing is impossible.

I come from a working class family where no one went to college. In high school, I was tracked for a career as a secretary, not a college-bound track. I told Sister Irenaeus of my plan to quit school when I turned 16 and get an apartment; to say my family was dysfunctional would be an understatement of enormous proportions. But Sister Irenaeus told me that there are others ways to escape. She introduced me to avant-garde, fringe, and experimental theater. This was theater I didn’t understand, but it opened me up to another reality; there was another way of looking at things. She also wanted me to consider college, something I worried was impossible since I was destined to graduate in the lower half of my class and my dad was dead-set against it. It’s not something he felt girls should do. But Sister Irenaeus never saw things as impossible. She had a prosthetic leg and walked with a cane, but nothing stopped her. With her help, I went to a small liberal arts women’s college in Iowa on academic probation, but it could have been Harvard as far as I was concerned — it completely transformed my life and changed my thinking about what I could do. Nothing is impossible.

Creativity is not just for artists. It’s for everybody, everywhere.

I bought Twyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit by the bushelfulls to give to people because she talks about how creativity isn’t mysterious; it’s merely an iterative process anyone can engage. I found that so inspiring. It’s about approaching innovation in a flat-footed way — and I’m nothing if not dogged — encouraging people to aspire by asking them what they want, and then setting out to get there.

I’m credited with the Dearborn Discovery Core, our campus-wide general education program. But I just guided the process and set the constraints for a faculty team. In the past, we learned that students needed to spend additional years in college because when they changed majors, they found they had taken the wrong general education courses. I said, “Whatever you design, it can no longer be possible for students to take longer to graduate because they took the wrong general education.” General education courses required for a particular major are no longer general education.

Our faculty — brilliant minds who are committed to helping students succeed and get to graduation — came up with the program, which is an innovative way to give students a solid foundation for learning and keep them on track to graduate in four years. Happily, our four-year graduation rate has increased.

Don’t be a diva. The best people in any field typically aren’t.

I watched George Burns and Gracie Allen on TV when I was a kid in the 1950s. Shows like theirs were my introduction to theater — even though the show was recorded, they always treated it like a live performance because they came to radio, film and television from vaudeville. When I went to NYU for graduate school, one professor gave an assignment to interview someone in a popular performance form; I decided I wanted to interview George Burns. I went to the NYU library and got the mailing address for his agent. Burns could not have been more accommodating and was very gracious with his time. He tied his vaudeville acts to his later radio, television, and film performances and that connection lead to my first academic publication. On the tape, you could hear his cigar clanking on the ashtray and after the interview — he said, “you sure got a lot out of me.” We took a photo together and then he asked if I had gotten my “car fare” (meaning airfare). I had, but I believe he would have paid for it if I’d have said no; his agent had written that Burns didn’t think I should come all the way to Los Angeles just to interview him. He was one of the most famous people in the world and he couldn’t have been more generous. I learned from him that the best people in any field are not divas.

Kate Davy with one of her inspirations, George Burns

Do what you believe is right; it’s not a popularity contest.

Still young in my career, I worked as an associate dean at the University of California-Irvine. My dean was a man who spent a lot of time with faculty trying to find a middle ground. I thought he was a great compromiser, a great communicator, a consensus builder. People liked him. But when his five-year review came, 80-percent of faculty wanted him out. I did not see it coming; it was a shock. I realized in that moment that it isn’t a popularity contest and if I was going to be run-out-of-town-on-a-rail, I wanted to go knowing I did not compromise what I thought was the best thing for the institution. Being liked is nice, but you need to focus on moving the organization forward and earn respect. People may not like you, but they won’t be able to say that you didn’t get stuff done.

Gravitate toward what you are good at.

For my dissertation, I wrote about avant-garde playwright and director Richard Foreman, who directed Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera at Lincoln Center to great acclaim. He often gave me long eloquent, erudite answers during our interviews. But when I once asked him about talent, he gave a short answer: “People gravitate toward what they are good at.” Over the years, I’ve taught, directed theater and published. But I’ve gravitated toward administration. Some see administration as hopeless drudgery, but I think it can be creative and make a real contribution. In higher education, effective administrators learn what people aspire to and then see what can be done to get them there. I’ve had a very fulfilling career.

Faculty and Staff

Provost

Off

Thu, 11/21/2019 - 06:00

From establishing one of the campus' colleges to creating the Talent Gateway, Davy says it's been a fulfilling 10 years.

News

2021 Faculty Award Recipients Named

stuxbury — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 18:13:48 +0000

2021 Faculty Award Recipients Named stuxbury Mon, 03/15/2021 - 14:13

Photo of 2021 Faculty Award recipients

��-Dearborn is known for faculty who go above and beyond in the classroom and in industry. Even during a pandemic, professors continued to do outstanding work in teaching, service and research.

"Every year ��-Dearborn has an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate faculty for outstanding performance in teaching, service and research. It gives me great pleasure to announce this year's distinguished recipients of awards in all categories," said Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Sue Alcock.

Photo of Professor Rashmi Luthra

The 2021 recipient of the Academic Citizenship Award is:

Professor Rashmi Luthra, Department of Language, Culture, and Communication, CASL

Photo of CASL Lecturers Samia Al-Qaisi and Kristi Stewart

The 2021 recipients of the Collegiate Lectureship are:

Samia Al-Qaisi, Department of Natural Sciences, CASL (Lecturer IV)
Kristi Stewart, Department of Language, Culture, and Communication, CASL (Lecturer II)

Photo of Assistant Professor Maya Barak

The 2021 recipient of the Distinguished Digital Education Award is:

Assistant Professor Maya Barak, College-Wide Programs, CASL

Photo of CECS Professor Wencong Su

The 2021 recipient of the Distinguished Research Award is:

Associate Professor Wencong Su, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, CECS

Photo of Assistant Professor Kristin Poling and Professor Kamalesh Kumar

The 2021 recipients of the Distinguished Teaching Awards are:

Assistant Professor Kristin Poling, Social Sciences Department, CASL
Professor Kamalesh Kumar, Department of Management Studies, COB

In addition to giving congrats, Alcock expressed deep appreciation for the committee members who reviewed nominations.

Academic Citizenship Award Committee: Susan Baker, Jeffrey Bouwman, Barbara Klein, Lisa Martin and Bruce Maxim

Collegiate Lectureship Committee: Sheryl Edwards, Chris Samfilippo, David Sobiechowski, Anne Thomson and Edward Williams

Distinguished Digital Education Award Committee: Susan Baker, Jeffrey Bouwman, Barbara Klein, Lisa Martin and Bruce Maxim

Distinguished Research Award Committee: Jorge Gonzalez del Pozo, Taehyun Shim, Vivek Singh, Claudia K. Walters and Ya Sha Yi

Distinguished Teaching Award Committee: Armagan Bayram, Brian Green, Gerald Holowicki, Patricia K. Smith and Julie Taylor

Off

Mon, 03/15/2021 - 18:12

See who is named the best of the best for the 2020-2021 academic year.

News

Faculty recognize university leadership for coronavirus response

lblouin — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 14:28:10 +0000

Faculty recognize university leadership for coronavirus response lblouin Mon, 12/07/2020 - 09:28

A student completes a temperature check with a security officer at a building access checkpoint on the ��-Dearborn campus.

When ��-Dearborn leadership decided to take a remote-first approach to instruction to help control the pandemic on and off-campus, Faculty Senate Chair Natalia Czap says there was understandably disappointment among some faculty. “I think, at first, there were definitely people who thought we were being too cautious,” Czap says. “As faculty, we really love teaching and love having our students in the classroom. And I think some faculty were concerned about the impact that would have on students and their desire for in-person instruction and interaction.”

Now 10 months into the pandemic, however, Czap says there is wide consensus that the clear, aggressive, science-informed response to the pandemic was the right one. Most importantly, new cases in the ��-Dearborn community have remained extremely low, even as cases have surged across Michigan and the country as a whole. And Czap points out the early decision also gave faculty and students time to make adjustments to their academic and personal lives. In particular, she says faculty have felt extremely supported by the non-stop effort of instructional designers at The Hub; and by the Provost’s office, which has taken extra steps to address increased workloads and family care demands through the Care and Equity Task Force.

In recognition of this, the Faculty Senate recently unanimously passed a motion commending Chancellor Domenico Grasso, Provost Sue Alcock and the rest of the leadership team for “their efforts to assure the safety and security of our campus community during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Czap added that “everyone should be proud that our campus’ sacrifices ensured that Wayne and the surrounding counties had fewer coronavirus cases than we would have probably seen otherwise.”

Grasso says it’s “generous and kind” of the faculty to acknowledge senior leadership but that ��-Dearborn’s COVID-19 response has been a real team effort. “To the faculty, I would say: Right back at you. No matter what the leadership did, if the faculty and staff were not a part of the team joining us, this could have gone in a very different direction. So they should be equally commended for their efforts.”

Grasso attributes the success of the university’s response thus far to several factors. He says Director for Emergency Management Laura Drabczyk’s contributions on the Emergency Operations Center team, and the entire team’s efforts, have been pivotal; as have Provost Alcock’s efforts to help faculty transition to a mostly remote learning environment. In addition, clear, frequent communications from leadership helped keep everyone in the ��-Dearborn community on the same page during a quickly evolving situation.

Grasso says it’s also important to recognize that ��-Dearborn was “dealt a very good hand” compared to other colleges and universities, many of which are now struggling with higher case counts.

“We are extraordinarily fortunate to be a 100 percent commuter campus, and to not have residence halls, large dining facilities, or a large medical center,” Grasso says. “But we’ve played that good hand well, and I think we can all be proud of that."

Off

Mon, 12/07/2020 - 14:06

The Faculty Senate recently passed a resolution commending the Chancellor, Provost and leadership team for their foresight in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

News

��-Dearborn announces two new leadership appointments

stuxbury — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 13:33:34 +0000

��-Dearborn announces two new leadership appointments stuxbury Tue, 08/04/2020 - 09:33

��-Dearborn announced two new leadership appointments over the past week. On Friday, Chancellor Domenico Grasso announced that Leigh McGrath, currently the director of business operations in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, is starting this fall as ��-Dearborn’s interim budget director. In her new role, McGrath will lead campuswide budget development and planning, oversee the university’s recently launched zero-based budget initiative, and explore the development and implementation of a “Responsibility Center Management” budget system.

McGrath brings more than 20 years of experience in administrative, research and academic units on the Dearborn and Ann Arbor campuses. Her work in the engineering colleges on both campuses has earned her multiple honors, including a nomination for the 2016 Chancellor's Staff Recognition Award, the 2013 "U Make A Difference" Award and a nomination for the 2012 College of Engineering Judith A. Pitney Staff Service Career Award. “I have full confidence that she will do a great job in this new position and will continue to shape the future of ��-Dearborn in a positive direction,” Grasso wrote in his announcement to campus. “I look forward to working with Leigh to ensure that we continue to offer an excellent, accessible and affordable education to our students today while capturing opportunities for tomorrow.”

On Monday, Provost Sue Alcock announced that — pending approval by the Board of Regents — Philosophy Professor and Mardigian Library Director Maureen Linker will take on an additional role as Associate Provost. In that position, she will oversee the academic portfolio of graduate programs, coordinate and promote project-based learning across campus, and support faculty development initiatives.

Linker will continue in her role as library director. During her two years in that position, she has overseen a number of new programs that Alcock says creatively “position the library as an interdisciplinary center for student engagement, campus activity and faculty support.” These include course redesign “spa days” with the HUB, 24/7 Final Jam exam week activities, and the new project-based learning IDEA Laboratory. As a professor of philosophy, Linker’s research focuses on knowledge acquisition, production and evaluation as a collective, rather than individual, achievement. During her time at ��-Dearborn, she has also served as chair of the Department of Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts and director of the Women’s and Gender Studies program. Most recently, she co-chaired the Scholar-Teacher working group for the campuswide strategic planning effort.

Grasso also announced that he is holding off on filling the currently vacant vice chancellor for business affairs role in order to explore potential alternatives to the university’s current leadership structure. For the foreseeable future, Human Resources, Police and Public Safety (which jointly reports to the U-M Department of Public Safety and Security), Financial Services and Facilities Operations will report directly to the chancellor.

Administration & Governance

Off

Tue, 08/04/2020 - 13:28

CECS Director of Business Operations Leigh McGrath will become the university's interim budget director, while Mardigian Library Director Maureen Linker will take on an additional role as Associate Provost.

News

Susan E. Alcock appointed ��-Dearborn provost

stuxbury — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 18:15:24 +0000

Susan E. Alcock appointed ��-Dearborn provost stuxbury Tue, 11/19/2019 - 13:15

Susan E. Alcock

Susan E. Alcock has been named University of Michigan-Dearborn's next provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, effective Jan. 1, 2020.

“Sue has a long and distinguished career in the academy having held numerous administrative and academic roles. She is a world-acclaimed scholar and teacher who will bring great insight, perspective and industry to our senior leadership team,” Chancellor Domenico Grasso said. “Sue has served at some of the best universities in the world. Her experiences at Brown University, and the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor and Flint), have prepared her to immediately step into this position and make a significant impact on our campus.”

Since 2018, Alcock has been ��-Flint’s interim provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. Prior to that, she served in U-M's Office of the President as special counsel for institutional outreach and engagement, and as a Presidential Bicentennial Professor.

“I am happy and honored to be joining the team at ��-Dearborn at what is clearly an exciting and energizing time in its 60-year (and counting) history,” Alcock said. “I look forward to meeting people, learning lots and getting going.”

Alcock is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and professor of classical archaeology and classics in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, at U-M. Most notably, she is a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship often called a “genius grant.” Alcock will be the first MacArthur Fellow on the Dearborn campus.

“During the last year and half, Sue has made important contributions to academic affairs at ��-Flint,” said ��-Flint Chancellor Debasish Dutta. “Not only did she provide leadership on academic programs, policy and Provost Office restructuring, she also oversaw the accreditation process by leading the Provost Office team. Sue is well positioned to lead academic affairs at ��-Dearborn and we look forward to strengthening our intercampus collaboration as she takes on her new responsibilities.”

After teaching at the University of Reading, Alcock began her U-M career in 1992, culminating in her position as a curator in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, and the John H. D’Arms Collegiate Professor of Classical Archaeology and Classics.

In 2006, Alcock moved to Brown University where she served as Joukowsky Family Professor of Archaeology and director of the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. During this time, she also served as deputy and interim vice president for research at Brown. She returned to U-M in 2015.

In addition to the MacArthur Fellowship, Alcock has received numerous honors and awards including the visiting fellow from Princeton University, the Spiro Kostof Award from the Society of Architectural Historians and the Henry Russel Award at U-M. She has also lectured at the British Academy, among many other venues. Alcock has published 13 books and more than 50 articles and has been cited thousands of times.

Alcock completed her Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude at Yale University and received a second bachelor’s degree from the University of Cambridge, where she also received a Master of Arts and Ph.D.

Faculty and Staff

University-wide

Provost

Off

Tue, 11/19/2019 - 18:13

Acclaimed scholar and teacher will join campus Jan. 1, 2020.

News

Scott Riggs named director of global engagement, wants to bring global education local

nlerma — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 14:22:15 +0000

Scott Riggs named director of global engagement, wants to bring global education local nlerma Mon, 02/05/2018 - 09:22

Scott Riggs

Scott Riggs knows first hand how deep a study abroad experience can be. After all, it took him a good 15 years of reflection to unpack all the ways in which his semester-long undergraduate experience in Ghana transformed him. But having that opportunity, he said, makes him one of the lucky ones.

“The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor campus is a massive center of study abroad, but still, only about a quarter of students will have that experience,” Riggs said. “Last year, here on our campus, we had about a hundred students study abroad—out of almost 10,000 students.”

Riggs, who’s now serving in the provost’s office as the university’s first director of global engagement, said he’s committed to growing that number. But his bigger vision is to capture the essence of that cultural exchange experience—and then package it in creative ways that provide opportunities for students closer to home.

For Riggs, that will mean tapping the potential of what he calls “difficult differences”—which include the typical dividing lines in American society, like race, religion or political affiliation.

“Those things can certainly divide us,” Riggs said. “But teaching students how to have empathy, how to be curious, how to understand a different side—I think that only comes with interacting with someone very different from you, experiencing the dissonance and then learning from it.”

But that, Riggs said, doesn't require crossing national borders, especially in an area with as much diversity as metro Detroit.

He points to the university's current Semester in Detroit program as a case in point. The program—which is offered to ��-Dearborn students through ��-Ann Arbor’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts—allows students to pursue their studies or internships while living and investing in a host Detroit neighborhood.

And Riggs said even smaller bites at the apple—like events where students can simply have a conversation with someone of a different background—can lay the ground for busting out of our silos.

“There’s a contact theory, which says you bring differences together and good things will happen,” he said. “But the reality is sometimes we need to have a little help to have it come together in a meaningful way.”

Riggs envisions a full menu of similarly spirited activities, from quick hits like workshops up through a top-shelf opportunity like study abroad. And as with most things at the university, the goal is to help students develop skills and knowledge that will help them in their lives and careers down the road. In fact, Riggs said so-called “soft skills”—like creativity, listening and empathy—are increasingly coveted by employers. And like any skill, they have to be actively learned, developed and continuously exercised. Global education, Riggs said, provides a natural context to sharpen them.

Riggs also believes ��-Dearborn is the perfect setting for innovating in this new, more expansive global education space.

“A lot of this builds on things we’re doing well already, because our campus has a long history of appreciating our diversity,” he said. “To me, that deserves some thought as to how we can make it an even stronger experience for students and the larger metropolitan community. There’s no reason we can’t be leading the charge.”

Inclusion or Diversity

International

Provost

Off

Mon, 02/05/2018 - 14:21

The new director of global engagement is committed to harnessing the power of diversity in our own backyard.

Provost

Big changes, familiar faces

HLC report: ������-Dearborn educates students to meet 21st-century challenges

Connecting campus with community

Practice-based learning takes center stage

Provost Catherine Davy reflects on her decade at ������-Dearborn

Nothing is impossible.

Creativity is not just for artists. It’s for everybody, everywhere.

Don’t be a diva. The best people in any field typically aren’t.

Do what you believe is right; it’s not a popularity contest.

Gravitate toward what you are good at.

2021 Faculty Award Recipients Named

The 2021 recipient of the Academic Citizenship Award is:

The 2021 recipients of the Collegiate Lectureship are:

The 2021 recipient of the Distinguished Digital Education Award is:

The 2021 recipient of the Distinguished Research Award is:

The 2021 recipients of the Distinguished Teaching Awards are:

Faculty recognize university leadership for coronavirus response

������-Dearborn announces two new leadership appointments

Susan E. Alcock appointed ������-Dearborn provost

Scott Riggs named director of global engagement, wants to bring global education local

HLC report: ��-Dearborn educates students to meet 21st-century challenges

Provost Catherine Davy reflects on her decade at ��-Dearborn

��-Dearborn announces two new leadership appointments

Susan E. Alcock appointed ��-Dearborn provost