Syracuse University’s next vice chancellor and provost wishes she was a cell phone — wanting to plug herself in and download all the information about the university.

“Really, I need to get a brain dump from everybody,” Michele Wheatly said. “There’s a lot of things going on across the nation in higher education and you need to learn these distinctive things that are happening at the institution.”

She was approved by the Board of Trustees on Friday to be the vice chancellor and provost-designate. Coming to SU from West Virginia University, she’ll play a key role in many of Chancellor Kent Syverud’s initiatives, most notably the implementation of the Academic Strategic Plan.

SU made its formal announcement of Wheatly’s hiring on Friday. She’ll replace Interim Vice Chancellor and Provost Liz Liddy, who has served in the position since last January after Eric Spina announced in December 2014 that he was stepping down from the position.

Over the next two months, Wheatly, referring to herself as a “cool provost” who “likes to make the journey fun,” said she’ll be spending time with different constituency groups on campus, such as students, the University Senate and other administrators.

And although she officially starts her now job in May, Wheatly says she’ll work to gather as much information about the university and its issues as possible.

Academic Strategic Plan

As the chief academic officer, Wheatly will oversee the implementation of the Academic Strategic Plan.

The Academic Strategic Plan is one of the three components of Syverud’s Fast Forward initiative. The plan will “serve as a strategic roadmap to guide priorities and institutional decision making in the coming years.”

Wheatly, a scientist by trade whose work focuses on biomedicine but has implications for other parts of the life sciences, said the plan — completed last July — was “well-crafted” with the right amount of input from the community. During the process of developing the plan, SU turned to the community for feedback and got it from more than 1,000 sources.

As provost at WVU, a position she held from January 2010 through June 2014 before becoming special assistant to the WVU president, Wheatly oversaw the implementation of a strategic plan, something she said will help her with the Academic Strategic Plan at SU.

“Because I have experience from other institutions, including being a provost, I know a lot about all of these six areas (of the Academic Strategic Plan) but what I don’t know so well right now is the Syracuse culture and community, so I’m hoping the people will lead me and teach me, very quickly, what would be needed for me to know so we can start moving ahead,” she said.

Veterans affairs

One of those six areas is an enhanced commitment to veterans affairs. Syverud has made improving veterans and military affairs one of his main priorities, and it has led to the creation of the Office of Veteran and Military Affairs and the growth of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families to be one of the leading institutes in the United States.

Work like that excites Wheatly as her parents served in World War II and her husband is a Vietnam veteran.

“The best for vets is very distinctive — I haven’t seen that in anyone else’s plan,” she said. “The military has been very important to my own family, and I also think it’s a place for the institution to bring together interdisciplinary approaches to address a very major problem.

“I think it’s a game-changer for the university.”

Research

Coming off an announcement that SU researchers helped prove Albert Einstein correct and the university’s move into the top tier of research institutions, Wheatly said it’s important for the university to only improve when it comes to research.

“The goal is always to try to do better and not get complacent about being in the top tier,” she said.

In terms of research activity, SU moved from an R2 designation to an R1 designation, determined by the 2015 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, last month. The university was one of 15 schools to move from R2 to R1 and is now one of about 100 institutions in that R1 designation.

Days after the new research classification, it was announced that SU researchers had helped prove Einstein’s theory on gravitational waves to be accurate.

“Doing better work, getting better brand recognition on the national scene and really being an institution of first choice I think is going to be very critical,” Wheatly said of research at SU moving forward.

Courtesy of Caltech Media Assets

Student officials

Wheatly is like Mary Poppins — “just so eloquent,” Student Association President Aysha Seedat said.

Serving on the provost search committee as a representative of undergraduate students, Seedat said she was looking for a vice chancellor who will be visible to students and will “talk at our level.”

Seedat said she liked the fact that Wheatly has experience implementing a strategic plan, similar to what she’ll be doing at SU.

“This person has to come into the job knowing that the Academic Strategic Plan is long and it’s going to take awhile to implement, so you need someone who is going to be captivated and is able to motivate everyone and say, ‘Hey, we still need to keep going, we’re almost there, we’re almost there,’” Seedat said. “And it’s something about her, it’s the way that she talks to you, that she’ll pick you right back up again.”

Like Seedat, Patrick Neary, former Graduate Student Organization president and a member of the search committee, said the Academic Strategic Plan will play an important role in Wheatly’s tenure.

During the transition period from now until mid-May, Neary said he’ll “just really try and help her understand the breadth of what we have going on here at the university.”

“I think she absolutely has the ability to come in and help steer SU down some really exciting new paths when it comes to strategic planning and just generally, improving SU’s academic portfolio,” Neary said.

Published on March 6, 2016 at 11:36 pm

Contact Justin: jmatting@syr.edu | @jmattingly306