On Feb. 27, President Val Smith announced in an email message to the community that Provost and Dean of the Faculty Tomoko Sakomura will not return to her administrative position, leaving open one of the most influential positions at the college. The acting provost is Kathleen Howard, Edward Hicks Magill professor of mathematics and natural sciences, whose tenure is expected to end over the summer. Smith’s email set the deadline for hiring a candidate by the first of July, which gives the future provost only weeks to take over operations before Howard’s departure and sets an ambitious timetable for what is often a lengthy and laborious search.
In a conversation with The Phoenix, Timothy Burke, professor of history and former co-director of the Aydelotte Foundation, which studies higher education and the liberal arts, noted the unique difficulty presented by the expedited nature of the search.
“This search has to happen in a very accelerated way compared to every other Provost search in the thirty years I’ve been here,” he said. “We are starting right now and we have to be done with the person in office and ready to go pretty much by early to mid-June. This logistical requirement has implications for the content of the search itself.
Burke described a past faculty committee that deliberated on the question of whether to choose provosts internally, from Swarthmore’s faculty, or from searches for possible candidates outside of the college. Ultimately, the committee formally recommended that the college continue to hire internally for the position, a policy that Burke says most faculty still support. He argued the limited schedule the search committee will be operating on might foreclose the possibility of looking elsewhere, even if the administration was interested in doing so: “We wouldn’t be able to look for an external [candidate] in the normal way, which is to hire an executive firm to go out there and headhunt.”
Vice President for Communications and Marketing Andy Hirsch noted in an email to The Phoenix that President Smith is “close to finalizing a search committee.” He declined to answer additional questions about the search until the committee had been established, including whether or not the search would consider both external and internal candidates. At the time of publication, Kathleen Howard had not responded to a request for comment.
Burke also described the significance of the provost position in the current moment, and the myriad of ongoing issues the provost would have considerable sway in. “The provost has some serious work to do in terms of trying to help create more trust between the administration and faculty, and to address some pretty deep issues of habitus and culture.”
Among other issues, the provost will deal with the drafting and implementation of Swarthmore Forward, the college’s strategic plan, and the interests of a wide array of elements of the college, including the many academic departments, libraries, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. But there’s one part of the college Burke hopes the new provost keeps a healthy separation from: the administration itself.
“I think the new provost has to figure out how to represent the faculty more effectively, not just the administration. It has been this problem. I think that a provost often gets appointed saying that’s what they’re going to do, and they go up to Parrish and they instantly become palace captives on some level. They only talk to the administration and therefore identify with the administration’s positions and they lose touch with us.”
