The Provost's Office: An Informal History
Introduction and Acknowledgments
In writing this history I have used
files from the North Carolina State University's Archives. The files used most
often were those from the Provost's Office, the Chancellor's Office and the
minutes of the Faculty Senate. Since the files were not always as complete as
I wished, I have searched in the files of other offices to try to find specific
documents or correspondence. I have included some things as I remember them,
and asked others how they handled matters and procedures.
The history begins with an appropriation
from the North Carolina General Assembly in 1955. The General Assembly approved
Deans of the Faculty positions for North Carolina State College (NC State),
the Woman's College (now UNC-G) and for the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). John W. Shirley was appointed to the position at North
Carolina State College by the Executive Committee of the University of North
Carolina Board of Trustees at its October meeting that year. Prior to that time,
duties to be assumed by the Dean of the Faculty had been handled by the Chancellor,
the Dean of Student Affairs, the Business Manager, very often by the Vice President
or Provost of the UNC System, and sometimes by no one. Most of the academic
and personnel decisions were made at the school level, with salary approvals
made through the system by the Chancellor, by the President, by the Executive
Committee of the Trustees and finally by the State's Department of Administration.
The duties for the position of Dean of the Faculty in the Trustees' report were
described by President Gray: "The purpose of the Dean of the Faculty position
is to strengthen and coordinate educational policies and to aid the Chancellor
in academic planning for the future." Incidentally the position came with
a secretary, and insofar as I could determine, no operating budget. At first,
and even after I joined the Dean of the Faculty's staff in 1967, the operating
budget came from the Chancellor's Office budget and from whatever additional
funds the Dean of the Faculty or the Provosts could get from the Chancellor,
the Business Manager or the school deans. So the practice of begging for funds
started early, and all Provosts have had to be extraordinarily talented in begging
and very persuasive to get others to help fund ideas and projects.
In this history I shall cover functions,
activities and relationships of the Provosts who served from 1955 to 1993. A
few examples are curriculum, race, gender, salary increases, promotions, tenure
and the offices that reported to the Provost, such as Admissions, Computing
Center, Cooperative Education, Library et cetera. These units will not be covered
as completely as the associated personnel and programs deserve, but fortunately
in some cases a history of the unit has already been written, e.g. the Library
(Littleton), or will be written, the Faculty Senate (Downs), and about the Integration
of North Carolina State University (Clark). I am trying to persuade several
others to write histories of their units.
At first I started writing this
history in a rather straight and factual manner with little commentary. Then
I decided to change the approach to include comments found in the files on various
subjects and others of my own as I remembered the way things seemed at the time.
This history ends on July 1, 1993, at the end of Frank Hart's tenure, and at
the beginning of Phillip Stiles' tenure as Provost.
I wish to thank both Maurice Toler, archivist and Susan Nutter, Director of
Libraries, for providing me with a phone, desk, supplies and access to a copier
in the D. H. Hill Library. I would also like to thank Edward Hodges, library
technical assistant, for providing me initially with a computer so that I could
begin to learn to type. Toler and Hodges were always willing to help me find
the needed records in the files of the Archives. Mr. Hodges also wrote letters,
handled my mail and telephone messages. They were a pleasure to work with. I
thank Susan Nutter, John Ulmschneider, and several of the library's systems
staff, Edward Rubes, Andrew Hall, Matt Smith, Rhonda Leary, Jay Cornish and
Lisa Thaxton, for providing a Macintosh computer, access to the printer, and
all types of assistance as I began to learn how to use that computer. Andy Hall
said, "Here is the computer. Start using it. If you have problems just
let us know." After I was shown how to turn the computer on and to use
the help balloons, I proceeded. Once over the weekend the computer crashed,
and this was when I had not saved all of the work that I had done on floppies.
I learned fast. Hall recovered much that appeared to have been lost. Later on
the computer would freeze and not completely start, or it would get to a certain
point in its start up cycle and automatically restart. Matt Smith came to the
rescue. The computer had a problem that he had not seen before. So it seems
that I provided some new learning experiences for others, too! Since I began
to write this report at the same time I was learning to use the computer, I
could get into some real binds and Rubes, Hall, Smith, Thaxton or Hodges would
come and get me untrapped. Sometimes I kept trying and even untrapped myself.
Smith and Leary printed all of the earlier drafts, and they helped solve several
problems that I had with the arrangement of the text. Cornish hooked me up to
a new printer located in Archives, and I began to print from my computer. Later
Caroline Weaver, a clerk in special collections, and Eddie Hodges helped to
solve mysteries after I was connected to the printer in Archives and my computer
would freeze during a printing job. Everyone decided that the problems were
not entirely with me, and that I needed a new computer. Thank goodness.
I called on a large number of people
to read sections. This usually meant that the person presently worked, or had
worked in that particular unit or activity. The people called on most often
were Dr. Larry Clark and Dr. Murray Downs.
Gerry Winstead also read through
the entire report and made editorial corrections. She also made many suggestions
on improvements in the text, including how I could rewrite portions to make
them more understandable. She was also very helpful with tenses and all those
things which the wonderful secretaries did for so many years that I don't even
recognize as errors when I make them. I only recognize errors when someone else
makes them.
Dr. Rebecca Leonard did final edits
of the book, for which I am grateful. She also assisted in the process of moving
the manuscript to publication. Becky thought she was finished with my jobs,
but I am glad she took on this final task.
As I have written this document,
I have also accumulated a list of happenings, tales and things that were said
that should not be included here. Another project is to get these tales recorded.
They will include tales about faculty, administrators, staff, students and others.
More to come!
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