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Ronald J. Daniels, the provost of the University of Pennsylvania, will become the 14th president of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the school's trustees decided today.</p>
<p>Daniels was tapped in a special meeting of the Board of Trustees after an international search involving nearly 300 nominees.</p>
<p>"Ron is a strategic thinker, known for articulating and implementing bold and visionary academic ideas and initiatives," said Pamela P. Flaherty, chairman of both the board of trustees and the search committee.
<p>I met President-Elect Daniels today and he is a cool guy. In my opinion, Brody will be very missed but Daniels is a great selection to replace him next spring. And a very good selection for Homewood specifically.</p>
<p>Provost to President almost sounds like a demotion. According to Webster's Colligiate Dictionary a "provost" is "the keeper of a prison" or, alternatively, "a high ranking university officer".</p>
<p>I agree. Provost "sounds" like the highest position in a university, however the post is only second to the President of the university. It is the second highest post in the university, it is basically equal to the "Chief Academic Officer."</p>
<p>Provost --> President is not all that uncommon. Former JHU provost Steven Knapp is now currently President of GWU university. Current JHU Provost Kristina Johnson was former Dean of Duke's Pratt engineering school. I believe Dr. Bill Brody was former provost of University of Minnesota.</p>
<p>It is weird because President elect Ronald Daniels has only been at the helm of UPenn for 3.5 years. Is it common for high ranking officers to shift positions from university to university like this? I am uncomfortable with this constant shifting...Where is the loyalty to the university you have been chosen to lead if you leave after just 3.5 years.</p>
<p>"Daniels said he hopes to enhance need-based aid at the university. Hopkins does not have need-blind admissions, meaning that students who have less ability to pay could be at a disadvantage in admissions decisions. He also said he would be a "champion" for undergraduate education." - baltimoresun.com</p>
<p>This sounds very promising. He doesn't hold office until March, right? I guess this means that this year's admissions will be unaffected. :(</p>
<p>Because it's big news. Major universities don't choose new Presidents all that often, and for better or worse the President can have a lot of impact.</p>
<p>Provost to President is very common. Penn's last two Presidents were provosts elsewhere in the Ivy League -- Judith Rodin (Yale) and Amy Gutmann (Princeton). The University of Chicago's current President, Robert Zimmer, was the Provost at Brown, well-regarded former Brown President Vartan Gregorian had been Provost at Penn, and Chicago's only female President, Hannah Gray, was Provost at Yale. (Lots and lots of other examples, too, up and down the prestige ladder.)</p>
<p>Daniels is sort of a double-play, too, because next to Provost, being Dean of a law school is also a popular pre-Presidential position, and that was what Daniels was doing at the University of Toronto before he went to Penn.</p>
<p>Daniels sounds like a great choice, because Toronto and Penn are both large, complex urban universities, like Johns Hopkins, so he probably knows a lot of the ropes around that. (At Penn, I think he was regarded as something of a lifesaver, because it turned out that Amy Gutmann's experience at Princeton was NOT extensive enough -- Princeton as an institution is really quite a bit smaller and less complex than places like Penn and Hopkins.)</p>
<p>It's hardly unknown for universities to promote internal candidates to be President (e.g., Drew Gilpin Faust at Harvard), but it's probably more common to pick an outsider (even Harvard reportedly offered the position to several outsiders first, which I think would have been a first).</p>
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It is weird because President elect Ronald Daniels has only been at the helm of UPenn for 3.5 years. Is it common for high ranking officers to shift positions from university to university like this? I am uncomfortable with this constant shifting...Where is the loyalty to the university you have been chosen to lead if you leave after just 3.5 years.
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<p>Yes. It's increasingly common. I think I recently read the average length of time someone stays as a provost or president is 5 years.</p>
<p>Everyone's always climbing the ladder - from dean to provost to president as well as trying to get to better and better institutions. I don't think it's ideal . . . but it's the way things are.</p>
<p>Dean to provost is a pretty severe bottleneck, and the universe of candidates for presidencies isn't limited to provosts. When an opportunity like the presidency of Hopkins comes along, I don't think you can blame someone for accepting it unless he has a gold-plated guarantee of elevation to the presidency of his own institution (and it's of equivalent status) within a few years. That clearly wasn't going to be the case with Daniels -- the Penn position isn't likely to be vacant for another six or seven years, and Penn has a history of picking outsiders in any event.</p>
<p>Currently, President Brody is the highest paid president in the country. Where do you think Daniels will fall? I'm sure Brody earned that pay over his 12 year tenure so I guess Daniels will have to as well.</p>
<p>It all depends. Internal candidates are always considered, but it depends so much on the direction the University wants to take, and how well each candidate does during the interview process. From what I have heard from a few members who sat on the Presidential Search committee ... Daniels stood out among all the candidates in all of his interviews and it became clear he was perfect to take the reigns from Brody.</p>
<p>It's far more common for universities to pick outsiders as Presidents than to pick internal candidates. Internal candidates are the norm only at the most prestigious universities, and not even really so much there:</p>
<p>Harvard has not recently had an outsider as President, but it was an open secret that the position was offered to at least two outsiders the last go-around before it was accepted by Drew Faust. Yale's current President was an internal candidate, but his predecessor came from Columbia Law School. The same is true at Princeton and Stanford -- their current presidents were internal candidates, but each of them followed an outsider. The last two Presidents of Columbia have been outsiders, the last three (at least) Presidents of Penn, too, and the last four (at least) Presidents of the University of Chicago (although the current President had spent most of his career at Chicago before leaving to be Provost of Brown, so he is sort of 50-50). The President of Duke is the former Dean of Yale College. The current Vice-Chancellors of Cambridge and Oxford (their equivalent of President, since the Chancellorship is honorary) are both former Yale Provosts. </p>
<p>So Hopkins is in good company.</p>
<p>I think the idea is that an outsider brings valuable experience from somewhere else to the table, and is more likely to be able to think "outside of the box" with respect to how any particular university is run -- maybe not outside of every box, but outside of whatever box the institution was in when the President was appointed.</p>
<p>(Counting Daniels, five of the last six Penn Provosts went on to serve as university Presidents or Chancellors.)</p>
<p>If you divide out the $3.2 billion dolllar 'Knowledge for the World' campaign per day starting from July 2000 to Dec. 31st, 2008 (the end date for the Hopkins campaign drive), Brody is responsible for getting $1 million dollars PER day for Hopkins from friends and generous donors. A huge portion Brody's duty consists of meeting and having lunch with donors and guest for the campaign and Brody has been very successful at fundraising. Hopkins consistently ranked among the top 5 or top 7 schools for fundraising. </p>
<p>If you put the 'Knowledge for the World' campaign into perspective, Brody underpaid compared how much he contributes to the University. If JHU were a for-profit corporation, Brody would be getting unspeakable benefits packages and salary wages :D</p>
<p>We should seriously forge an alliance with MICA. Just like how we affiliated with independent graduate schools like SAIS and independent music conservatories like Peabody, we should consider alliances with MICA just down the street from Peabody since.... it is ranked 4th best graduate school for Fine Arts according to USNews.</p>
<p>Arts at Hopkins is seriously lacking. We need President elect Daniels to engulf other academic centers...maybe like UofBaltimore's Merrick Business center building for the New Carey business school. :D That would be nice.</p>
<p>This is very good news having an outsider lead Hopkins. Hopefully President Daniels put more emphasis on the undergraduates at Hopkins. The Faculty should pay more attention to them since they will be the future alumni who would contribute greatly to Hopkins assuming their Hopkins experience is rewarding and nurturing.</p>
<p>If you have been following much of what President Daniels is working on and plans to tackle, much of his time will be focused on undergraduates:</p>
<p>Former President Brody also spent much of his presidency focusing on undergraduate life at Hopkins, especially in terms of improving the Homewood campus.</p>
<p>Finally, if you speak to many of the current JHU students they would say that Hopkins is a lot different than it was in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, in relation to faculty relationships with undergraduates.</p>