Provost Donna Randall

The University's chief academic officer, on the job for just five months, is approaching her new post with energy, vitality, and an enthusiasm that is contagious. "I was very pleased to have been selected as provost, and I'm even more pleased with the job now than when I accepted the position," Donna Randall said during her first interview with The Observer.

The new provost has been most impressed with the level of dedication, commitment, and caring of the faculty and staff - a level, she said, that she has not seen anywhere else she has worked. "There are so many people here that go far beyond what is expected of them."

At her previous institution, the University of Memphis, Randall was interim senior vice provost of academic affairs and a professor of management, and prior to that, she served as dean of its Fogelman College of Business and Economics. Perhaps it is her understanding of the importance of customer service relations that makes her particularly appreciative of the student focus she sees on campus. "Faculty and staff understand that they are here for the students and genuinely want our students to be delighted with their educational experience," she said.

Randall feels fortunate to have arrived at the University when she did. She enjoys working with President Walter Harrison, who, she said, does so much to strengthen the sense of community on campus and to build ties with the external community. "He has a presence on campus. You frequently see him walking around campus talking with students and attending faculty lectures and performances. On any given day you can find him anywhere from playing softball with the staff to making a presentation before the board of regents.

"I believe that the combination of such a group of committed and capable faculty and staff with a high-energy and visionary leader bodes very well for the future of this University," she said.

Randall says she is continually surprised and gratified at the amount of teamwork she sees exhibited among faculty and staff. She speculated that some of this could be a result of the difficult financial times that the University experienced during the recession of the early and mid-'90s. Faculty and staff pulled together to meet the challenges of that period, and she believes that this sense of working together to resolve problems still pervades the campus.

Today, the University is experiencing a dramatic recovery, with record undergraduate enrollment, a balanced budget for the third year in a row, and for the first time in many years, an operating reserve. A portion of that reserve will be used to invest in a variety of academic initiatives and to support long-needed physical-plant enhancements, faculty and staff development needs, and technological improvements.

Challenges remain, however, as a legacy of the earlier economic constraints. "As a result of earlier funding levels, we are experiencing ‘academic deferred maintenance' in several areas," Randall said. "We have too few faculty for the broad range of programs we currently offer." That became evident soon after her arrival on campus, when the Connecticut Board of Education granted probationary approval to the Division of Education's teacher certification programs. The state raised a number of concerns, some of which are administrative in nature; others involve the number of programs and the level of resources allocated to them. The University is aggressively addressing those concerns, and the new provost is confident that state officials will renew accreditation for the programs following the next campus visit in 2001.

Such a situation does make clear, though, Randall said, that the major challenge currently facing the University could be summed up in one word: focus.

"We have too many academic programs, considering the size of our institution, the number of faculty and staff we employ, and our operating budget," she said. "We do offer a wonderful diversity of academic programs, but if we try to do too much, we cannot have the resources needed to invest in select programs to make them distinctive. The strategic planning process currently under way at the University will allow us to develop that focus. Through this process, we will be able to identify our strengths more clearly and target certain areas for growth."

If focus is the first challenge facing the University, then preparing students to be "technologically literate" is definitely the second, according to Randall. "Many students are coming to us better prepared technologically than many of us are. As educators, it is our responsibility to prepare them for a world pervaded by technology. We need to review the current state of technology at our University and compare where we are with our peer institutions. Through strategic planning efforts, we will be able to identify where we need to strengthen our technological infrastructure, which academic programs and structures should be in place to support goal achievement, and how much we will need to invest in the area of information technology." She sees a technological window of opportunity that will be open for five to 10 years. At the end of that time, she believes, the University must emerge at full technological capability in order to be a competitive private university among its peers.

Two opening events this fall were remarkably enlightening for her, Randall told The Observer. The first, for new students and their parents, had been arranged to answer questions about tripling in the residence halls. As many universities experienced this fall, a large entering class, combined with an increased number of returning students who chose to remain on campus, resulted in crowded residence halls. While questions were posed about how various aspects of University life would be handled for these students, the most pressing questions clearly concerned technology. Would all students sharing a room be able to access University servers? Was there enough space for three computers in the tripled rooms?

Similarly, at a new-faculty orientation session, faculty became very interested when the topic of technology was introduced. What classrooms are wired on campus? How can they reserve these rooms? What level of technological support exists for faculty on campus? Whom do they call if they are experiencing difficulty with their computers?

Someone who plans to help in this particular area is Randall's husband, Paul Hagner. He brings with him to the University of Hartford a National Learning Infrastructure Initiative Fellowship, which allows him to study how universities can encourage faculty to use new teaching technologies. Hagner is currently preparing an institutional readiness report. Over the next six months, he will be meeting with all faculty, as well as many staff and student representatives, to determine how the University currently supports learning technologies and what level of support faculty, staff, and students would like. Once the "where we are" and "where we want to be" questions are answered, Hagner will help develop and implement a plan for the adoption of new teaching and learning technologies for the University.

Randall said her family already feels at home in West Hartford, where her 13-year-old daughter, Kate, is attending Sedgwick Middle School. Kate and her parents are looking forward to their first snowfall. After several years in Tennessee experiencing Southern hospitality, they were somewhat surprised to have found such a warm welcome from their new Northeastern neighbors. "Our move north has been so easy." Randall said. "People here have been every bit as open, friendly, and welcoming." -DS