With President Ruth Simmons' impending resignation and Executive Vice President for Planning and Senior Advisor to the President Richard Spies' subsequent plans to step down, the University will see significant administrative turnover in the upcoming year. Such senior-level turnover is consistent with the University's history of presidential transitions, current and former administrators said, and the University is working to ensure a smooth transition between leadership.
Senior-level administrators are often implicitly tied to working with the president who chooses them, said Marisa Quinn, vice president for public affairs and University relations. President-elect Christina Paxson will be meeting with members of the senior staff over the coming months to determine the best path forward for the University, Quinn said.
"Senior staff at Brown, or anywhere else frankly, are selected to be part of a particular president's administration," Quinn said.
A frequent reason for high turnover at the time of a presidential transition is the need for incoming presidents to assemble teams that can best realize their goals for the University, Quinn said. "Leading the University is a significant responsibility, and it's essential for a president to have an administration that understands, appreciates and can implement the vision established by that leadership," she said.
Presidents sometimes create new positions, as was the case with Spies when he arrived at the University in early 2002. Spies, who originally worked with Simmons at Princeton, came to Brown to assume his current position at Simmons' behest.
Most senior administrators serve at the discretion of the president, especially those who report directly to the president. These positions include the provost, the dean of medicine and biological sciences and most vice presidents.
Many of these administrators lack formal, written contracts, and tenure agreements that are reached tend to be flexible on either end, said Rajiv Vohra, professor of economics and dean of the faculty from 2004 to 2011. Vohra, who reported to former provost David Kertzer '69 P'95 P'98, said he served a full five-year contract but opted out partway through his second five-year contract, a move he said was not unusual. His predecessor, Professor of Sociology Mary Fennell, served four years in the position.
"To be an administrator ... is not something that a lot of people think of doing long-term," Vohra said. "It's important not to see this as the way in which typical faculty appointments are structured."
In past years, many top administrative transitions have coincided with the appointments of new presidents. When former President Gordon Gee came to the University in 1998, turnover was widespread with the hiring of a new dean of college and two provosts in the span of two years. And less than two months after Simmons assumed office in 2001, Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences and Public Policy Kathryn Spoehr '69 resigned as provost. Spoehr's successor, Robert Zimmer, was one of five senior administrators who announced their resignations in the summer and fall of 2006.
"When the president first came, the rhetoric was that everything has to change and that nothing that has happened before was any good," Spoehr told The Herald in 2006 at the time of the five resignations.
Paxson told The Herald in a recent interview that it was too soon to determine whether there would be leadership changes in the near future.
During such transitions, the preservation of institutional knowledge and academic continuity is a concern and a priority, administrators said. This process is often made easier when both the predecessor and successor come from within Brown, Vohra said. "There needs to be a good balance between new energy and continuity, so that means typically that you don't have wholesale, complete changes," he said.
Since leaving office, Vohra said he has communicated often with his successor, Dean of the Faculty Kevin McLaughlin P'12. "We've been in fairly frequent touch," Vohra said. "There are issues that don't very neatly end on June 30."
Quinn said Simmons has particularly emphasized the importance of ensuring a smooth transition in upcoming months. "There's always attention paid to succession planning, and it's something that President Simmons has encouraged in her senior team," she said. "Every situation is different, but there is certainly significant thought and support provided to ensure that the leadership of the University have the resources they need to be successful."
The injection of new ideas can often be a positive force for the University, Spoehr said. "Some institutional knowledge is always lost, especially if a replacement comes in from the outside of Brown, and very often, that's intentional. Very often, you might want to bring in some new ideas," she said. "You don't want people who are stuck in the past."
At the same time, a balance must be maintained, Spoehr said. "It's a delicate art of how much you can move an institution forward," she said, citing former Harvard President Larry Summers as a leader who tried to change too much too quickly and consequently failed.
Regardless of the particular leader, changes at a university are often slow and laborious, Spoehr said. "Moving a university is a lot like moving a cemetery," she said. "It takes a lot of spade work and heavy lifting, and you get no help from the inhabitants."
