The head of the history department and a former chairman of the UA faculty have been appointed to key jobs in the Office of the Provost, where they will oversee faculty development and retention as well as general education and teaching.
Provost George Davis announced yesterday that Juan Garcia, head of the history department, will take over as vice provost for academic affairs. Jerrold Hogle, a distinguished professor of English, will fill the new post of vice provost for instruction.
Garcia will work with deans and department heads on faculty development and will oversee retention and recruitment efforts. He steps in for Elizabeth Ervin, who retired over the summer.
Hogle will be the first person to hold the job of vice provost for instruction, which was created last year after an administrative reorganization eliminated the job of vice president for undergraduate education.
Hogle will assume many of the responsibilities from that job, including general education and academic advising.
Garcia and Hogle's appointments are the latest step in a reorganization of the university's senior administrators. Over the summer, President Peter Likins announced that several vice presidents' titles would change and that the vice president's position would be eliminated.
"The new structure for the provosts and vice provosts is complementary and will require us to coordinate our efforts," Davis said in a press release. "It is a step that is overdue and will increase support for academic affairs."
Both new vice provosts will earn $151,500, about $13,000 more than the previous vice provost for academic affairs and slightly less than the vice president for
undergraduate education's former salary.
Garcia said one of his priorities is to be more proactive in retaining faculty members who other
universities might try to lure away.
He wants to work with deans and department heads to identify these faculty members and offer them incentives to stay at the UA before other universities approach them.
"I think we have to do a better job of identifying candidates early," he said.
Often, top faculty members are offered jobs at other universities, forcing the UA to make counteroffers to keep those people from leaving.
Last year, those counteroffers were successful 55 percent of the time, with 74 of 134 people who were offered jobs elsewhere choosing to stay at the UA.
Garcia will inherit a retention problem that has long plagued the UA but that might be getting more of the money which administrators say is necessary to pay better salaries to top faculty.
Last semester, UA administrators asked the state Legislature for $15.5 million to help retain faculty, money which they say is sorely needed because dozens of faculty members have left for better paying jobs in recent years.
Garcia said he wants to promote Tucson as an ideal place for professors to live, an aspect of recruiting and retention that he considers underemphasized.
"I think sometimes we don't use Tucson's desirability to our advantage," he said.
In attracting new faculty, Garcia wants to further a university-wide effort to increase diversity.
"I am very enthusiastic about Juan Garcia," Davis said. "He brings to the position perspective and a solid commitment to advancing diversity."
Garcia became head of the history department last year, and served as senior vice president for academic affairs and dean of the College of St. Mary in Omaha, Neb., from 1998-2001.
He joined the UA in 1981 as an associate professor, and was nominated in 1998 for the Five-Star Faculty Award, which is given by UA students.
Hogle said he will undertake a comprehensive review of the general education program in hopes of identifying its central mission and asking whether that mission is appropriate.
By the end of February, he hopes to form a committee to lead this review, and he said student input would play a critical role as the program is evaluated.
He also wants to hire more academic advisers, in hopes that students will eventually be able to take advantage of "one-stop shopping," rather than having to see different advisers for general education and their majors.
"That will help students once they have their majors," he said.
Hogle joined the UA faculty in 1974 and has received several teaching awards in addition to serving in a variety of faculty leadership posts.
He was elected chairman of the faculty in 1997, and served in that post until 2001. It was during that time that Hogle and Likins signed the Shared Governance Agreement, which gives faculty members key roles in consulting with the president before he makes important decisions.
Hogle is also chairman of the Strategic Planning and Budget Advisory Committee, which makes spending recommendations to the president.
"The fact that I know as much as I do as an English professor about the budget is going to be very advantageous for doing this kind of a job," he said.
Both those jobs entitled him to a spot on the President's Cabinet, an advisory body made up of the UA's top officials, including all its vice presidents.
Hogle is scheduled to teach one class this semester, and says he hopes to continue teaching as he transitions to an
administrative role.
"As a university distinguished professor, Jerry Hogle has a track record of excellence in teaching, advising and scholarship," Davis said. "Jerry goes not just the extra mile, but the extra hundred miles to do things right, to get things done and to advance this institution overall."
Both Garcia and Hogle will officially take over tomorrow.
Interim administrators have been filling the posts since last semester.