Provost Cora Marrett won’t be President Marrett anytime soon. Chancellor Marrett is still a possibility.
Marrett was a finalist in the Iowa State University President search. The Iowa Board of Regents announced last week that Gregory L. Geoffory, a senior administrator from the University of Maryland, got the nod.
There is still no word from the President’s Office on any interim Chancellor for the Amherst campus. However, Marrett is considered a prime candidate, at least by the academic deans.
The Campus Chronicle reported that the Deans sent a letter to the President’s office, endorsing the current Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs as interim Chancellor.
The President’s office was unavailable for comment, as was Provost Marrett. Many academic deans were also unavailable.
At this point, it is still conjecture to consider Marrett the heir apparent. However, if the academic deans are “urging” the President William Bulger, it is quite likely that the President’s office will review Marrett’s Iowa State interviews.
Marrett met with the Ames campus of ISU on January 17th, at an open forum. Marrett was peppered with questions on a variety of issues including outreach, diversity and faculty concerns.
University Relations at Iowa State issued a press release summing up Marrett’s visit.
“I have regarded what we call ‘community service learning’ as the honorable heir to the earlier land-grant tradition,” Marrett told the crowd. “At the same time that I support that, I support also the strength of the learning part. I don’t think it’s useful just to have people going out doing random activities.”
Marrett also described her feelings on what makes a good faculty.
“I don’t measure scholarship by the number of publications or the size of grants. I measure it by the quality of ideas,” Marrett explained. “Sometimes, if one is in a field where the advancement of ideas is often recognized by others through the support of the research grants that they get, then I expect that to be another validation of those ideas. It can’t just be a numerical count of publications. I especially get disturbed when I see a list of publications when I can never figure out what’s the unifying theme.”
Marrett herself has an impressive list of publications. Her curriculum vitae lists thirty six articles, essays and books. Her unifying theme seems to be social issues concerning minorities and women.
Marrett has received at least $750,000 in grant money, and urges other faculty to search for the same.
“I have at many times encouraged my colleagues to go out and get some funding,” Marrett said. “There are resources out there, I expect they’ll be able to do it. Whatever we undertake, we should undertake because we are going to do it and do it extremely well.”
As of December of 1999, Marrett took home a salary of $162,223.88. If she becomes interim Chancellor, she won’t have to worry about a pay cut. The President’s office, after reviewing several other national averages for top level public college administrators, raised Chancellor Scott’s salary increase to $220,000 a year from $160,000.
The new Chancellor salary is $3,000 less than the national average.
