The Office of Academic Affairs is in the process of transitioning between leaderships, and the official role of chief academic officer of the University is vacant.
President Renu Khator announced in an email to faculty that Senior Vice Chancellor of the UH System and Provost of UH John Antel will not hold another year in office and will instead return to the teaching faculty.
“I am grateful to have had him as a team member, as my provost and as a thought leader on higher education economics,” Khator said in the email. “John is a respected economist, and his ideas on new models for higher education hold great promise for the future of higher education.”
“Please join me in thanking John for his tremendous contributions as senior vice chancellor, as provost and prior to that, as dean of the largest college in at the University of Houston.”
Antel served as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences from 2002 to 2009 and was appointed as senior vice chancellor for Academic Affairs in February 2009. As provost, he was the chief advocate for student success and ran the academic side of the university, including undergraduate, graduate and professional education and the hiring or promoting of faculty.
Dan Wells, chair of the Department of Biology and Biochemistry and former Faculty Senate president, said that although some conflicts existed between the faculty and Academic Affairs, Antel was generally well-liked.
“Antel routinely attended Faculty Senate meetings and was always willing to discuss faculty concerns,” Wells said. “I will always remember him for his support in establishing the Center for Teaching Excellence.”
According to the CTE website, the center was established in June 2010 as a faculty-driven initiative geared toward improving the effectiveness of teaching at UH and enhancing student success. It offers resources for teaching assistants and faculty and operated for the first year under the direction of the Faculty Senate.
“A lot of universities have this and we didn’t have it yet,” said Wells, who helped implement the center.
“We presented a proposal to Dr. Antel and he was very supportive of it. He was funding us. … He could’ve said, ‘Sorry, this isn’t going to happen. Just forget about it.’ But he didn’t. He said, ‘This is a good idea. I’m going to support this.’ So he got us going.”
Wells said Antel helped improve student success and first-year experiences, but it was a long process.
“It’s only been four years, but if you look over the four-year period, first-year retention rates have gotten a lot better. The quality of students we’re admitting has gotten a lot better,” Wells said. “He implemented a lot of things that were important.”
“But we want to improve our student success rates. Our six year graduation rates are really bad. And we’re in the mid-forties (of percent graduated). People who enter, six years later, do they graduate or not? I mean, the good universities are in the seventies and eighties.”
According to the University’s institutional research reports, the percent of students who graduate UH in six years or less is 46.1, up from 41.8 in 2008, and graduation in four years or less lies at 16.5 percent. In 2011, about 80 percent of students returned after their first year. This number has increased from about 79.2 percent in 2008.
“Sometimes things moved a lot slower than we would’ve liked to have seen them. But a big ship moves slowly, I guess,” Wells said.
Faculty Senate president Dmitri Litvinov, who had regular meetings with Antel while he was in office, said he was sorry to see the provost leave his post.
“He was a gentleman — one of the nicer people at UH,” Litvinov said.
Attempts were made by telephone, email and media relations to contact Antel, but he was unavailable for comment.
Elaine Charlson, executive associate vice chancellor and vice president for Academic and Faculty Affairs, provided day-to-day supervision directly after Antel’s departure, and Khator appointed Paula Short, distinguished professor of the College of Education and director of the Institute for Policy, Research and Evaluation, as interim senior vice chancellor and provost Jan. 2.
“I have also asked her to provide leadership in reorganizing the Provost’s Office in preparation for its transition to new leadership, and to initiate the process of building a case statement for the forthcoming capital campaign,” Khator said.
Short served as vice chancellor for the Tennessee Board of Regents for more than 10 years and associate vice president of Academic Affairs for the University of Missouri System prior to that. Short said she will not be a candidate for the permanent position because she wanted to return to teaching and research.
“I agreed to step in only on an interim basis to assist (Khator) with some specific tasks and to use my expertise during the legislative session while UH conducts a national search for a new academic leader,” Short said in an email.
“I am honored to be asked by President Khator to serve the University of Houston in this important role. I look forward to working with faculty, staff and administrators to advance the exciting goals of the University of Houston.”
Khator will host informational sessions with the faculty in January and February where concerns and suggestions for candidates may be voiced.
“We’re going to move ahead,” Litvinov said. “Tier One priorities are at the top of the agenda.”
