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Restructure now rolling, Leitzel heads back into retirement

Posted on | June 18, 2009 | 972 views |

By Jeff McCallister

Joan Leitzel knew the job facing her wouldn’t be easy; on the contrary, she was certain it would be among the most difficult challenges of her career.

But when President Gordon Gee came calling with a request that she begin the task of restructuring the arts and sciences at Ohio State, she knew it was an offer she couldn’t refuse.

“It seemed to me to be very important,” said Leitzel, who will end her term as interim executive dean of arts and sciences at the end of June. “When President Gee told me that the restructure was a priority, I thought this was going to be a special time at a very special university. I wasn’t just willing, but privileged to work with the arts and sciences.”

Leitzel had retired after a widely lauded term as president of the University of New Hampshire when she got the call from Gee. She also had served as provost at the University of Nebraska and as a divisional director for the National Science Foundation.

But before that, she was a professor of mathematics here from 1965 until 1990 (including time as associate provost for curriculum and instruction), and she said that experience made the task at hand a bit less complicated.

“I think it was helpful that there are some people in leadership that I had worked with before, and knowing how decisions were made within the university also may have helped,” she said. “And that I already knew where the buildings are on campus.”

The arts and sciences colleges deliver nearly 70 percent of all undergraduate instruction and employ more than 1,000 faculty and 8,000 staff.

When those colleges — Arts, Biological Sciences, Humanities, Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Social and Behavioral Sciences — organized into a federation in 2003, it was with the notion that the federated structure would build strength within and across those colleges.

But a committee chaired by vice provosts Randy Smith and Martha Garland concluded in May 2008 the federation’s limited financial authority and lack of control over personnel policies made it unable to provide either a unified voice or increased visibility for the colleges.

Enter Leitzel, with both budget authority and a vice provost title that give her Alutto’s ear on a variety of issues.

That she was able to jump right in when she arrived proved crucial to getting as much done as has been done in the past year — including work on the administrative structure of the arts and sciences and redesigned business practices and processes, culminating with a formal request to the Council of Academic Affairs to alter the former Federation of the Arts and Sciences in order to form a single College of Arts and Sciences.

“I think we are on the right trajectory,” Leitzel said. “There have been times when I wish the pace were faster, but my sense now is that there is a common expectation of what arts and sciences can be.”

Even with the successes that have been realized, she said Joseph Steinmetz, who will take over the position permanently July 1, is still in for a full-time job.

“My goal was, in one calendar year, to position the arts and sciences for a permanent executive dean and vice provost, and that we’ve done,” Leitzel said. “I might not be leaving him a tidy package, but I’m leaving lots of very good people who will be able to help.”

And as much as she defers much of the credit for the success of the restructure so far onto others — such as divisional deans Matt Platz, Giff Weary and John Roberts, the 15-person arts and sciences executive committee that has advised much of the process and others — she has a big fan in the president’s office.

“We are deeply fortunate to have had a scholar and leader the caliber of Joan Leitzel to lead the early work to reconfigure our arts and sciences,” Gee said. “She has been an effective force, both asking and answering some very difficult questions in order to create here one of the most innovative and broadly based intellectual endeavors in the country.”

And now Leitzel is looking forward to getting back into her retirement — though that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s headed for some old-academics home. Among her specific plans are to return to a consulting role with Zayed University, a 3,000-student women’s college in the United Arab Emirates.

“I put off several things that I will now resume,” she said. “I have four delightful granddaughters that I’m looking forward to being with for a while. I also will do what former university presidents do: Tell current university presidents how to run their universities.”

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