Five Questions: Bill Cheek

Q: What will be the major duties of your new job?

A: It’s going to be an evolving type of duty. It’s an acting job – for one year only. It deals primarily with undergraduate programs – program review, assessment of student learning, retention and several activities like that. Also, I’ll be working with the Coordinating Board for Higher Education on any new undergraduate programs that would be sent through. One of the more important duties is “other duties as assigned,” which always goes along with a job like this.

Q: How does your previous experience prepare you for the new position?

A: I have dealt with program development here. I’ve dealt with student activities of various kinds. I’ve dealt with faculty development for the college level. I think it’s just a matter of expanding it out to the entire university – many of the duties will be very similar, just more intense and much broader. I also chaired the last two regional accreditation efforts, and that gives me a little bit of understanding about how the university works.

Q: What are your major goals or projects?

A: One of the things we’ll be working on is to improve the system of program review, which we’ve had for a while, but this would improve it and make it a little bit more structured, perhaps, and a little bit more regular. We’ve improved retention, however you want to measure it – from freshman to sophomore, graduation rates, anything else – over the past 10 years, but there’s still room for improvement.

Q: What will be the biggest challenges?

A: All of these things are challenges. That’s one thing I like, working in academics – every day is a challenge, but every day is also new. I think that continuing to improve things like retention will be a challenge – we’re not bad at it, but we want to be a little bit better. In terms of program review, any time there is the image or perception of added accountability, it’s sometimes a difficult thing to sell to the faculty and the departments that the extra work is worth it, and it is. But I enjoy those kinds of challenges.

Q: What are the biggest differences between the recently implemented provost model and the previous university structure?

A: As I understand it, there would be a few more duties that would be coming through the provost’s office for academic affairs, as opposed to what occurred in the past. (President) Dr. (Michael) Nietzel has described it as a first among equals – if he’s gone, then the provost is the person who is in charge of the day-to-day operations of the university. From a faculty standpoint, it puts academics perhaps a little more in the limelight. It’s not that they weren’t in a priority position before, but perhaps as far as perception goes it gives them a little higher priority.[[In-content Ad]]