VCU Provost Finalist Peter Crouch Meets with Faculty, Staff, Students

By Michael Ford
University News Services

The first of four finalists being considered for provost and vice president for academic affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University said Wednesday he wants to maintain the university’s strengths and build on them.

Peter E. Crouch, Ph.D., dean of the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering at Arizona State University, said the provost is the key to the activities of the academic enterprise. His hour-long session before a group of faculty, staff and students at the University Student Commons theater included a discussion of how his experience as dean of engineering at ASU would serve him as VCU’s chief academic officer.

Crouch said his legacy to the ASU engineering school is its faculty base. He said he has hired 147 faculty members while rebuilding a program that had six deans in seven years. He cited a third of those positions as signs of program growth and the rest the result of retirements. He has seen significant growth in research grants earned by ASU engineering faculty and is an advocate of interdisciplinary collaboration. Crouch also said he has been mindful of diversity and has worked to improve diversity in the student body and the faculty.

As provost at VCU, Crouch said he would work on the cohesiveness of the undergraduate student body, focusing on retention and the length of time to graduation. To maintain the university’s strengths, Crouch said he would make investments in some departments, but make all departments feel they are part of the academic enterprise.

Crouch said he believes a provost should embrace the strategic agenda of a university’s president and work to implement it. Following his remarks, Crouch took questions from faculty.

Crouch has been dean of the ASU engineering school since 1995. He began as a visiting associate professor in 1984 and earned several promotions, including to chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering in 1992. From 1989 to 1995, he also was director of ASU’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering. Crouch earned his doctoral degree from Harvard University and his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Warwick in Coventry, England.

The other three candidates for the position will visit campus and are scheduled to address faculty, staff and students at the following times:

• Lester Monts, senior vice provost for Academic Affairs, University of Michigan, Friday, April 1, 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., University Student Commons,
Richmond Salon I

• Susan Herbst, dean, The College of Liberal Arts, Temple University
Monday, April 4, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., University Student Commons, Richmond
Salon IV

• Stephen Gottfredson, interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, VCU
Wednesday, April 6, 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., University Student Commons,
Virginia Rooms, C-D

For more information on VCU’s provost search, visit http://www.vcu.edu/provostsearch/index.html.