Vice Provost to leave JHU for Bryn Mawr

Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Ralph Kuncl will be leaving Johns Hopkins University this June to take the position of Provost at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. Kuncl, who was named the first Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education last July, accepted the new position on March 5.

Bryn Mawr President Nancy Vickers said that Kuncl was chosen from among "a very strong field of candidates" and stressed that "his impressive record of academic achievement and his deep commitment to liberal arts education were among the many outstanding qualities that appealed to Bryn Mawr's search committee."

Vickers also praised Kuncl's understanding of "the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and faculty renewal" and expressed confidence that "he will bring energy and a fresh perspective to the challenging role of [...] chief academic officer at the College."

Kuncl seemed enthusiastic about the new position.

"It was an extraordinary opportunity at a very fine institution," he said. "It means I have complete responsibility for all academic operations in a fairly complex college."

According to Kuncl, the office of Provost is second only to that of the President at Bryn Mawr.

Kuncl said that taking the position seemed like a good choice, especially "given my own long-standing passions for undergraduate education, which led me to take a fellowship to train in that area and also to create and fill the first position in undergraduate education here."

Both Kuncl and Hopkins Provost Steven Knapp said that they had expected him to remain at Hopkins for longer than a year when he was named Vice Provost last summer.

"I expected to be here for whatever it would take to make a substantial impact on undergraduate education," said Kuncl. "I had no intention of applying elsewhere or going elsewhere."

"None of us thought that he would be leaving quite this soon," said Knapp.

However, Knapp explained that "this was the logical next step for him" and seemed pleased with what Kuncl has been able to accomplish during the past year.

In his year at Hopkins, Kuncl has been involved in three key areas, according to Knapp.

"One of [these areas] is taking a careful look at the development of enrollment," said Knapp. "We have an interest in diversifying the student body."

Kuncl said that one of the major issues facing the enrollment team he has created and chaired is "to create a new plan for achieving a better ethnic minority diversity in the admissions process."

The team will "make sure we're a hospitable environment for students from diverse backgrounds," said Knapp.

Kuncl and Knapp also expressed interest in diversifying the student body in other ways.

Knapp said, "We have very strong concentrations of students in some fields, but we also have strong faculty in areas with relatively few majors."

"By diversified, we don't just mean code-word ethnic-diversity," said Kuncl. "We also include the diversity of undergraduates by discipline."

Kuncl has also been doing preliminary work in preparing the University for its reaccreditation process, which occurs once every 10 years. Under Kuncl's leadership, this process has been focused on improving undergraduate education.

According to Kuncl, this focus on undergraduate education is not an obvious thing for a research university to do.

"Emphasizing undergraduate education is not always something that has happened at research universities," he said. "This is a place that has at the pinnacle of its mission the creation of knowledge through research."

In conjunction with this renewed interest in undergraduate education, Kuncl has also created a new Commission on Undergraduate Education (CUE), the purpose of which is twofold.

According to Kuncl, the Commission will allow the University to re-envision how it approaches undergraduate education and will be a "vehicle of self-study for the purposes of accreditation."

Kuncl discussed some broad themes that he expects the CUE to work on.

First, the Commission will investigate issues surrounding student life.

"The question there is, 'How can we integrate the intellectual and social lives of undergraduate students better,'" he said.

CUE will also focus on what Kuncl described as "the hand-tooled education," which includes undergraduate mentored research, mentored creative activity and small-group learning.

Other themes that the Commission will address include increasing opportunities for study and research abroad, exploring ways to increase the rewards for faculty teaching and improving advising, career development and support services.

Though Kuncl has played a large role in these three areas, both he and Knapp stressed that the accreditation process, enrollment team and CUE should be able to continue without his leadership.

"I think he's done a very good job of getting those processes going," said Knapp. "All of these are collective efforts [and] should be able to continue even [with] a change in leadership."

Kuncl said that he would liked to have been able to see the processes completed, but said that he felt he had "made a substantial impact in getting them going."

"[The commission] is very well underway and a terrific group of people that I admire a lot," he said. "I have great faith that they will continue and achieve excellent results."

"Everything is in place for this group to proceed," he added. "My leaderly role is mostly done. [CUE] needs to move ahead on its own and at this point it really doesn't need me to do much else after June."

Both Kuncl and Knapp declined to comment on who might replace Kuncl as Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education.