Four top officials left the administration over the summer, and another announced her intention to depart later this month, prompting President Ruth Simmons to re-assign one of her experienced deputies and promote three Brown professors to new administrative roles. The effort to quickly fill the positions was intended to sustain continuity in decision-making, but concerns remain that the turnover could hinder the administration's initiatives.
Impending vacancies in three senior cabinet-level positions - provost, dean of the College and vice president for research - were announced last semester, and searches that promoted Brown faculty to these offices were completed in May and June. Provost Robert Zimmer was selected in March to take over as president of the University of Chicago, and in May Simmons announced his successor, David Kertzer '69 P'95 P'98, a professor of anthropology.
Dean of the College Paul Armstrong and Vice President for Research Andries van Dam both announced during the last academic year that they would leave their administrative posts to return to full-time teaching and research as professors of English and computer science, respectively. Their resignations were typical for faculty who have served a term of about five years in the administration. They have been succeeded by Katherine Bergeron, a professor of music, and Clyde Briant, the former dean of engineering, respectively.
Kertzer, Briant and Bergeron all took their new posts July 1.
"It's not unusual for people to rotate out of (administrative positions) after five years," Simmons said, referring to Armstrong and van Dam. "In those circumstances, you wish them well and say, 'Gee, it would be wonderful if you could stay longer,' but you understand that people want to make those decisions."
Meanwhile, three career administrators were lured away over the summer by other employers. In July, David Greene, vice president for campus life and student services, resigned to become vice president for strategic initiatives at the University of Chicago, and Ellen Waite-Franzen, vice president for computing and information services, said she would leave the University Sept. 30 to take a similar position at Dartmouth College. Michael Bartini, director of financial aid, stepped down Aug. 31 after being selected as the College Board's senior vice president for enrollment systems and management.
Simmons said these departures are a sign of Brown's success.
"The better Brown does, the more likely the people in the administration will get very good offers," Simmons said. "We face the situation of having to respond to offers all the time and of trying to make Brown as attractive as possible so that people will want to stay here for a very long time. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't."
Looking inwardWhen the positions of provost, dean of the College and vice president for research opened up last spring, Simmons decided to fill the vacancies by looking inward. "I thought there was a lot to be gained from appointing people from the inside" because "they demonstrated a commitment to the University" and they "understand its history, its values and its dynamics," she said.
The decision to fill senior administrative posts internally instead of through a lengthy national search marked a change in strategy, Simmons said.
"It represents a kind of change of thinking and a challenge to the prevailing assumptions at Brown," she said.
Simmons said when she first arrived at the University, she initially wanted to fill her administration with Brown insiders but was encouraged to look elsewhere. Those advocating national searches argued that they would generate a larger - and presumably stronger - pool of candidates and allow the University to import the "best practices" from other schools.
Kathryn Spoehr '69, a professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences who served as provost, dean of the faculty and dean of the Graduate School prior to Simmons' arrival at Brown, said, "When the president first came, the rhetoric was that everything has to change and that nothing that has happened before was any good."
"I didn't feel altogether comfortable with it, even though I agreed to proceed on that basis," Simmons said of her decision to hire outside administrators when she first came to Brown.
Both Kertzer and Briant have long histories at Brown. Kertzer met his wife while they were undergraduates here - she is a 1970 Pembroke College alum - and both of their children attended Brown.
"I will not say with any embarrassment whatsoever that part of what was appealing to me about David Kertzer," Simmons said, "was that he was a Brown alum, that he had been outside the University and worked elsewhere and brought that knowledge to bear, that he was a faculty member here at Brown and that he knows the University intimately."
Briant has been a professor at Brown since 1994. Bergeron was recruited to the University from the University of California, Berkeley only two years ago, but she served as chair of the Department of Music last year.
To fill the void in campus life and student services created by Greene's departure, Simmons appointed Russell Carey '91 MA'06, who has been at Brown for nearly two decades, as interim vice president for a two-year term.
After graduating from the University in 1991, Carey served as a student life officer and was later an assistant dean of student life. After leaving Brown in 1995 for a stint as an assistant district attorney in Northampton, Mass., he returned the following year and has since held a variety of posts in University Hall, including assistant to the provost, assistant to the president and, most recently, vice president and secretary of the University.
Simmons said it is no accident that many of her senior administrators - including Kertzer, Carey, Dean of Admission Jim Miller '73 and Neil Steinberg '75, vice president of development and campaign director - are Brown alums.
"It adds something immeasurably to the University," Simmons said, adding that when she was first approached about being Brown's president, her initial reaction was to ask, "Why didn't you go find a Brown alum to be president of Brown? It seems entirely logical to me for a Brown alum to be president of Brown."
Referring to her decision to appoint Carey to lead the campus life office, she said, "David Greene was terrific, but he was not Brown. He came from another place, and Brown was not something that he was deeply committed to in the way that Russell Carey has been for years."
Lingering concerns, assurances of continuityEven though Simmons quickly appointed permanent successors for the three most senior administrators who left their posts this summer, former University administrators say there's still some cause for concern.
"It has the potential to lead to disruption," said Sheila Blumstein, a professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences who was interim president prior to Simmons' arrival. "There has to be turnover. It is healthy for an institution to have new people to come in. They have different perspectives, a new energy level and sometimes can see things in a slightly different way. But too much turnover in too few years can be problematic."
According to Spoehr, the former provost, "There are pluses to turnover; you get new ideas. But the minus is that very often the nuts and bolts lap. It takes a senior administrator at least a year - if not two years - to get oriented."
New administrators - even if they have already been at Brown as professors - might not have significant managerial experience or the know-how needed to effectively implement an agenda, Spoehr said.
Spoehr added that turnover in the leadership of an administrative office is stressful and disruptive for all of its employees because they often have to help orient their new boss while worrying that that same person is deciding who to fire and who to keep.
The top administrators who have taken on new duties this summer - Kertzer, Bergeron, Briant and Carey - all told The Herald in separate interviews that their transitions were relatively smooth and that their offices are running at full speed.
"I don't think you can move forward on new initiatives without understanding the office and where you should fit in," Briant said. "But we haven't stayed still by any means."
Both Bergeron and Kertzer said the addition of administrators with new perspectives is a boon to the University. "What's interesting about a time of change is that everyone is thinking in very fresh ways about the issues that face the University," Bergeron said.
For the posts of provost, dean of the College and vice president for research, Simmons avoided the risks associated with powerless administrators in interim appointments. But other administrative posts vacated this summer were filled on an interim basis.
Terri-Lynn Thayer '81, currently assistant vice president for administrative information systems at CIS, will become acting vice president of CIS when Waite-Franzen steps down at the end of the month. Susan Farnum, associate director of financial aid, is serving as interim director of financial aid in the wake of Bartini's departure.
A search committee for a new director of financial aid has already been formed, and Kertzer told The Herald that a national search for a new CIS head will start soon.
Simmons, however, said she is in no rush to find a permanent successor for Greene. She has given Carey full power as head of campus life, even though his appointment is officially on an interim basis.
A two-year appointment is "a long enough period that Russell understands fully that he has got to engage quickly, continue the work and make some decisions," Simmons said.
Simmons said she wanted to give Carey full power as vice president for a fixed two-year term to ensure that campus life initiatives - including planning for new residence halls and major capital projects such as the Nelson Fitness Center - are not stymied, while also allowing time for student input in the search for a new campus life chief.
Carey's former duties as liaison to the Brown Corporation will be taken over temporarily by Marisa Quinn, assistant to the president. The Corporation will discuss how to search for a new secretary at its October meeting.
