Chancellor's Office
Quinn Administration, 03, 0054A
MEMORANDUM
TO: Provost Review Committee
FROM: Michael F. Collins, MD Chancellor
DATE: January 31, 2007
RE: Charge to the Committee
Please accept my sincere appreciation for your willingness to serve on the performance review committee for the provost and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Please know that I am acutely aware of the many other demands on your time and energies and that I, and the university community, are grateful for this important service.
I wish to first emphasize the importance of this process. As the chief academic officer of the university, the provost, next to the chancellor, has the most wide-ranging effect on campus; one whose decisions have profound bearing on the future of the university and one whose vision can advance or hamper the opportunities the university offers to its students, its faculty, members of its research institutes/centers, its academic staff and the various communities it serves or with which it interacts.
The purpose of this review is to evaluate the performance of the provost with regard to
- leadership
- policy development
- management and administration
- personnel
- affirmative action/diversity
- contributions to shaping the intellectual life of the campus.
While it is important to be responsive to concerns or issues that interested members of the university community may raise, I would like to emphasize the importance of focusing on the above criteria.
In your consultation with members of the university community, I recommend you interact with at least the constituencies with whom the provost interacts, for example, deans, the director
of libraries, members of the Executive Committee of the Faculty Council, members of the Chancellor’s Executive Staff, etc. In addition, I ask that you meet with representatives of our campus wide governance bodies: the Faculty Council and the Undergraduate Student Senate, and the Graduate Student Assembly.
In addition, I offer the following guiding reminders:
- the committee is appointed by the chancellor and reports to the chancellor;
- although members are drawn from varies constituencies, they are working on
behalf of the university community;
- the work of the committee is to gather and evaluate information that will help the chancellor in the chancellor’s assessment of the provost’s performance;
- fairness should be a defining attribute of the committee’s work;
- the chairperson will speak for the committee;
- timeliness is important (please refer to attached timeline);
- the committee must maintain the confidential nature of its work (interviews, written communications, deliberations and assessments, as well as its report).
Finally, I have asked Kathleen Powers, my chief of staff, to attend to any administrative issues in supporting your work or any questions with regard to the process. Kathleen may be reached at kathleen.powers@umb.edu or 617-287-6814.
Thank you very much.