Office of the Provost

The expression “eating our seed corn” comes from times of severe drought or other weather induced tragedies when farm families’ near-term survival threatened their long-term survival. With each harvest of corn, ideally some of the seed is not consumed, but retained for planting the next year’s crop. Without this “seed corn,” no next year’s crop […]

I’m having a great time these days working on episodes of a podcast with Georgetown faculty about their research lives. (see SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-267910017 and on Spotify:  https://open.spotify.com/show/5C7tgv1fz9cBs6nnOXbV2w?si=BoS2Ku9uSyCMBdvQHPk9Ig). It’s really fun for me to see how different faculty choose the projects they work on. I learn about their passion for a set of questions that is […]

I have written before on the diminishing level of trust reported by the US public in key institutions. A new Pew Research Center report on trust  updates some existing measures and adds some new ones. The overall level of trust in institutions seems quite similar to prior measured levels. Things don’t look like they’re getting […]

In the long history of universities, a hierarchical organizational model predominates. Faculty are organized into departments or similar units; unit heads administratively report to a dean of a school; deans report to a provost; the provost reports to the president; the president reports to a board. There exists, however, an alternative organization that arises among […]