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Univ. president reviews plans for future, position at Bradley

With his first month behind him, university president Gary Roberts sat down with The Scout yesterday to discuss his plans for the university’s future and his role in it.

Roberts touched upon some of the topics he previously covered during the speeches at welcome ceremonies, such as the role of president, the provost search and the future of Bradley at large.

“Part of what I’m trying to get my head wrapped around is what that role [of president] is, but from 30,000 feet it is not the role of the president to set academic policy,” Roberts said. “That’s really the role of faculty under the direction of the provost. I sort of see my job as being the face of the university, so I go to a lot of receptions … [but] it’s also my job to make sure the university has the resources that it needs to be what is aspires to be and that those resources are deployed in the most effective and efficient manner.”

Roberts reiterated his belief in delegating and trusting administrators to do their jobs by emphasizing his plans to empower success in the faculty and staff.

“My job is really to be a politician in the good sense of that word — not how we normally think of it these days — to help people to come together and understand everybody else’s perspectives and get everybody moving in the same direction,” Roberts said. “And that’s not a small task.”

Roberts said the provost is the most important person on campus, and Bradley is currently searching for the perfect fit. During his reception with students Jan. 20, Roberts said a new provost will hopefully be in position by this summer.

“There’s going to be a lot of people who help me shape the responsibilities of the provost,” Roberts said. “And the new provost will help me shape that. It’s not like I’m sitting on the top of a mountaintop issuing edicts, but ultimately I’m the one who has to create that structure.”

However, he said he won’t know what changes the provost position will or will not need until he has seen a basis of what does and doesn’t work, or until he’s been through a full budget cycle. The provost and oversees the deans of the five academic colleges, as well as working with faculty to make curriculum and academic strategy decisions.

Roberts said many of the issues on campus are resource-based, and solving these issues have both a long and short-term solution. In the short-term, he said the university needs to do everything it can to find more students, be that by making the admissions process more efficient, expanding recruitment geographically or creating attractive new programs.

“Longer term, we have to rethink the whole way in which we structure and deliver higher education, and I don’t have the magic bullets for that,” Roberts said. “I have some ideas, but it’s fairly clear to me that we have got to figure out how to use technology to deliver education in a more efficient way without losing the unique values that a residential four-year college experience provides.”

When looking forward to the future, Roberts advocated for the need for collaboration and adaptation.

“I’m convinced that the universities that make these adaptations will survive and thrive because what we offer is special and unique, but if we don’t, we will become extinct,” Roberts said. “I think there are probably too many campus college environments to survive and the college that adapt and become more efficient and more effective will survive and thrive, and the ones who don’t will probably go out of business. We need to be in the former group.”

With a strong emphasis on adaptation and technology, Roberts ultimately said getting the faculty, staff, students, alumni, the community and the trustees to work together and buy into a need for change would be the biggest challenge.

“If we all can understand both the need to change and the general direction in which we need to change things, we can accomplish a lot of great things, but if everybody’s pulling in a different direction, change becomes almost impossible,” Roberts said.

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