Search Prospectus

The Opportunity

Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (A&M-Corpus Christi) is seeking nominations and applications for the position of Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs (Provost).  The university seeks an accomplished academic leader who has the experience, skills, educational values, vision and energy to lead and support the institution’s growth and transition to a major graduate research university that capitalizes on existing strengths and the strategic advantages that flow from its geographic and cultural location.

The provost is the institution’s chief academic officer and senior officer responsible for executing the University’s academic strategy.  S/he reports directly to the president, is a member of the president’s cabinet and acts in the president’s stead in his absence.  Reporting to the provost are the vice provost for academic affairs, associate vice president for academic affairs (undergraduate education), associate vice president for enrollment management, associate vice president for special projects, associate vice president for research and dean of graduate studies, assistant vice president and director of the Mary and Jeff Bell Library, deans of the colleges of business, education, liberal arts, nursing and health sciences, and sciences and technology, and dean of community outreach.

Key Attractions of the Position

A&M-Corpus Christi is a relatively young university that is on a significant growth trajectory in terms of enrollment, undergraduate and graduate program development, educational and research facilities and other infrastructure, and external funding to support major targeted research and programmatic initiatives.   Its geographic location on the Gulf of Mexico, combined with the cultural diversity of the region, provide living laboratories that cannot be artificially replicated for pursuing educational and research questions of national and international importance. The demographics of South Texas are positive for long-term enrollment growth of institutions of higher education in the region.  Corpus Christi is the largest city south of San Antonio and a coastal city, making A&M-Corpus Christi highly attractive to prospective students from throughout the region and beyond.  The combination of regional demographics, the university’s physical location, and its growing academic reputation and expanding array of programs bode well for sustained enrollment growth. The university enjoys strong community support, both financial and political.  This support has manifested itself through substantial gifts to establish and endow major research centers and institutes, augment institutional funds to start up new programs and build and equip new facilities, and promote partnerships with area arts and cultural organizations.  The city has donated land to the university and provides major financial support to the university’s business incubator.  Business and civic leaders regularly join forces with the region’s political delegation to support the interests of the institution. A&M-Corpus Christi has in place the key elements to support its move to the next level among its peers as a major Hispanic-serving doctoral granting research university. The institution has a history of high quality undergraduate education, and its freshman year learning communities is a nationally recognized program.  It has a highly talented faculty and a current program array of more than 30 graduate degrees, including five doctoral programs and the MFA in studio art. It operates nine research centers and institutes, some with substantial endowments.  Total external research and sponsored program expenditures for the most recent fiscal year was $19.9 million, $16.1 million of which was research expenditures.  This is an institutional development context in which an accomplished academic leader can be creative and entrepreneurial in making a significant and lasting impact on a university. The university is located on a 240-acre island campus just eight miles from downtown Corpus Christi.  Its modern facilities include over $120 million in new construction within the past five years.  The recent acquisition of 137 acres of land in close proximity to the island provides further opportunities to expand facilities to support university services and programs.  Plazas, semi-tropical landscaping, and outdoor sculptures combine with the university’s physical location to produce a campus of extraordinary beauty.  Its geographic location on the Gulf of Mexico and its cultural border with Mexico and Latin America provide not only unique educational and research opportunities, but social and civic richness to life in the community. While all states are experiencing economic challenges, Texas has fared better than most of its peers during the current national economic downturn, and A&M-Corpus Christi is financially sound.  While not totally immune to the consequences of the state’s reduction in revenues, the steady growth in enrollment, extramurally funded research, and gifts and grants have been instrumental in helping to reduce the impact of the downturn.  A&M-Corpus Christi is part of one of the nation’s premier university systems.  As a member of the Texas A&M University System, the institution benefits from a range of centralized resources, increased visibility and political clout, and opportunities to collaborate in mutually beneficial ways with peers across member institutions and associated agencies.

Leadership Priorities

The portfolio of the provost is broad and complex and entails an array of significant, ongoing administrative responsibilities typical of other senior executive officers, and no attempt is made here to enumerate those responsibilities.  What follows is an attempt to highlight the leadership priorities for the new provost at this particular point in the university’s development and its operational context.

Build and Nurture a Culture of Engagement and Teamwork
A&M-Corpus Christi is in the midst of fundamental institutional change, and it is natural that all constituencies want to know how they fit into the university’s future.  The new provost must be intentional in developing an understanding of the institution’s history, culture, and strategic goals as a baseline for building mutual trust, meaningful engagement and productive teamwork.  S/he must then consistently communicate to the campus by word and action that engagement and teamwork are highly valued and understood as being essential to the university’s success in achieving its goals and aspirations.

Provide Academic Leadership in Support of the University’s Transition to a Major Graduate Research University
The university’s Strategic Plan: Momentum 2015 lays out a bold agenda that impacts every facet of the institution and is designed to transition A&M-Corpus Christi to a major graduate research university that capitalizes on its geographic and cultural location and current strengths.   In the academic affairs area, that agenda entails significant commitments to further strengthen the university’s undergraduate programs and support services while simultaneously expanding graduate programs at both the master’s and doctoral levels, significantly advancing funded research and scholarly and artistic activity, and extending the university’s external reach.  The new provost must develop a thorough understanding of the university’s goals. That understanding must be combined with a deep knowledge of the requirements to achieve and sustain the status of a major graduate research university in order to effectively articulate the university’s goals to internal constituencies and successfully engage faculty, research and other professional staff of the division, and other affected constituencies in the ongoing tasks of defining strategies, building action plans, implementation, assessment, and revision/refinement of goals.

Engage Deans, Department Chairs, and Faculty in Deliberation and Development of Strategies to Effectively Manage Changing Faculty Roles and Expectations
As the university has grown in enrollment, graduate programs have been added, including doctoral programs, nine research centers and institutes have been established, some with significant endowments, and funded research exceeded $16 million this year.  These transformative developments have brought fundamental changes to faculty roles and expectations.  Newer faculty members have been recruited in light of changed expectations and many long-term faculty members have modified their allocation of time and effort to reflect new expectations.  For others, such a transition is personally and professionally impractical.  The new provost will be expected to engage deans, department chairs, and faculty in developing workload and evaluation models, faculty development programs, and recruitment plans that simultaneously support the university’s deliberate transition to doctoral research status while capitalizing on the strengths of current faculty.  Working through the university’s governance structure, the results of these efforts will then need to be reflected in promotion and tenure guidelines and standards.

Address the Growing Gap between Enrollment/Program Growth and Staffing and Program Support Levels
When an institution is experiencing rapid enrollment growth and adding new programs, there is inevitably a gap between the resources that are available and the staffing and program support levels that are needed to assure academic excellence and student success in the present.   The State’s biennial appropriation cycle and formula funding system contribute to this gap.  One of the priorities for the new provost is to provide leadership in the development of strategies and action plans to effectively manage and mitigate to the extent possible the consequences of this gap for educational quality and institutional effectiveness.

Encourage and Support a Culture that Rewards Collaboration, Creativity, and Entrepreneurial Initiatives That Advance the Institution’s Strategic Goals
Most successful new graduate programs span the boundaries of traditional disciplines to focus on complex sets of issues of apparent long-term practical consequence.  The identification, development, and implementation of such multidisciplinary or cross-disciplinary programs require considerable creativity, healthy collaboration, and out-of-the-box thinking.  These things happen when leaders clear obstacles and visibly reward such activity.  A system of tangible and intangible rewards linked to activities that contribute to the achievement of institutional goals has been demonstrated time and again to generate more activity of a similar type.  Most successful research programs are likewise collaborative in nature, and this reality presents opportunity to emerging universities.   Not surprisingly, emerging graduate research universities seldom have the critical mass of human, physical or fiscal resources within a traditional department or program to be competitive with their more established aspirant institutions; but, by combining human talent and other resources from across the campus they can fulfill the critical mass test and simultaneously demonstrate creative and entrepreneurial traits that funding agencies, corporations, and the general public find highly attractive.  It is precisely through these types of efforts that A&M-Corpus Christi will be able to fulfill its strategic academic and research goals.  The new provost is expected to demonstrate in word and action the value that the university attaches to collaboration, creativity, and entrepreneurial initiatives.

Engage the University’s Deans, Department Chairs, and Faculty in Exploring Opportunities and Developing Plans to Expand Online and Mixed Mode Delivery of Courses and Programs
While technology is widely used in the university’s instructional programs, only a limited number of programs currently offer courses online.  There have been limited coordinated efforts to examine the future role of online or mixed mode course/program delivery, explore strategic market opportunities in these areas, assess resource requirements, or examine curricula to identify courses or programs that most readily lend themselves to alternative modes of delivery while maintaining or enhancing quality.  The new provost will be expected to engage the deans, department chairs, and faculty in substantive deliberations on these issues and develop an action plan that capitalizes on opportunities to use technology to enhance access to quality education in cost-effective ways, expands the university’s reach nationally and internationally, and keeps the institution competitive in a rapidly changing higher education environment.

Promote Campus Diversity and the University’s Role as a Major Hispanic-serving Institution
The university’s commitment to campus diversity and extending quality higher education opportunity to historically underrepresented populations rests not only upon the law. It is imbedded in fundamental values and educational principles—a belief in social justice, an understanding of the social and economic good that accrues to the community, state and nation from an educated citizenry, and an appreciation for the contributions that diversity of peoples and thoughts bring to the educational experience.  Further, these commitments, like many of the university’s instructional and research programs, reflect the university’s keen sense of place.

The university takes pride in its role and takes seriously its responsibilities as a Hispanic-serving institution.  While celebrating past achievements, the university recognizes that future success in this role, as well as efforts to enhance diversity on all fronts, requires intentional effort, special resources, and regular assessment of effectiveness.  The new provost must value these institutional commitments and become informed about their local manifestations in terms of programs, services, processes, funding sources, and people.  S/he must be prepared to articulate these commitments, both internally and externally, and provide leadership within the campus community to assure that they are incorporated into the university’s overall strategy to become a major graduate research university with expanded doctoral programs and greater emphasis on research.

Qualifications, Skills and Attributes Sought in the next Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs A&M-Corpus Christi’s next provost will be a highly respected academic leader with the following qualifications, skills and attributes: Academic credentials and record of professional achievement commensurate with the position of provost of a university that is rapidly moving to the status of a major doctoral research institution Significant and successful administrative experience in a university or academic college that has undergone significant enrollment and programmatic growth Effective communication skills—listening, speaking and writing Well-developed interpersonal skills combined with political savvy and a natural inclination to establish and develop relationships to support the institution’s academic goals Successful experience and demonstrable skills in strategic planning and assessment and a record of effectiveness in linking resource allocation and strategic priorities Demonstrable skills in the management of significant fiscal and human resources Leadership that embraces collaboration, transparency, and teamwork and reflects vision, creativity, and strategic thinking Demonstrated ability to set priorities, effectively communicate them to others, and make decisions, even difficult ones, in a timely fashion Demonstrated skills and personal attributes to be an effective advocate for academic affairs within a collegial context, both within the university and with external entities Experience with regional and programmatic accreditation, program reviews, outcomes assessment, and related strategies for advancing educational and institutional effectiveness A record of building a strong sense of community and engaging constituencies in the pursuit of significant and challenging goals Successful experience in developing and implementing new academic programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, including new doctoral programs Unquestioned commitment to academic quality and student achievement Evidence of understanding the requisites for transitioning A&M-Corpus Christi to the status of a doctoral research university Evidence of understanding of and commitment to the values and operational requirements associated with being a leading Hispanic-serving institution A demonstrated commitment to campus diversity and inclusiveness A commitment to and successful record of working within a system of shared governance Experience working in a public university within a multi-campus or statewide system is highly desirable but not mandatory A high level of energy, strong work habits, and absolute integrity

Nomination and Application Process
All nominations, inquiries, and applications will be confidential until the president identifies a limited number of finalists for campus interviews, at which point the names and application materials of finalists only will become public.  In order to assure full consideration, applicants must ensure all required materials are on file by August 19, 2010.  Required application materials include a substantive letter of interest; curriculum vitae; and the names, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses of at least five professional references.  References will not be called until after the first screening of applications and then only after the applicant gives explicit permission.  Finalists must be prepared to give written authorization for a formal background check prior to receiving an invitation for campus interviews.  All application materials must be submitted electronically in MS Word or PDF format to:
TAMUCCProvost@academic-search.com

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