College Provost Susan Prager's announcement last week that she will leave her position as Dartmouth's second-in-command caught many by surprise -- and some faculty and administrators felt there might be more going on than meets the eye.
As of now, when Prager's resignation becomes effective on July 1, she will be unemployed unless she decides to take a step backward and rejoin the University of California at Los Angeles law school faculty.
Prager herself told The Dartmouth on Sunday, "It's an unusual way to approach something like this."
Likewise, while College President James Wright wouldn't use the words "odd" or "suspicious" to describe the timing of Prager's decision, he would call it "unusual."
And some members of the Dartmouth community are wondering whether the situation isn't more complex than what Prager and Wright initially admitted.
Divided Attention
Prager told The Dartmouth her primary motivation for leaving the College stems from a sentiment that it would be unfair to the College if her consideration of outside positions were to prevent her from giving the provost's job her full attention.
"I felt that I was going to be more comfortable thinking about and exploring some other possibilities if people here understood that I was going to do that," Prager said.
Last fall, Prager was one of three finalists for the University of Wisconsin at Madison chancellorship -- which eventually went to a strong internal candidate.
That search process took place just as the first phase of a project Prager had been working on since last April reached completion -- the preliminary version of the College's academic planning report, which was met with strong disapproval from some members of the faculty.
Prager chaired the committee that produced the important document, which will not only guide the College's approach to teaching in the near future, but will also play a major role in the upcoming capital campaign.
"It was very difficult, given the kind of person that I am, to carve out the time that I wanted to take to think about [the U. Wisconsin chancellorship] ... while I was engaged in a very important, intense job here," Prager said.
Frustration
As described by a number faculty members, the report wasn't broadly representative of the faculty's opinions and some suggested to The Dartmouth that the unexpected and significant amount of time that Prager has had to invest in the report since its release may have sparked some frustration for the provost.
"She may have been a bit frustrated because the faculty has held up the bringing of this report to fruition," professor of English, Peter Travis said.
"It may be that Susan Prager just feels that there's too much criticism coming from the faculty, that she's worked too hard on this report," he continued.
After the proposal's release, Prager presented faculty members and faculty committees with an open invitation to meet with her to help alleviate their dissatisfaction.
"She may have found that there was a great deal more static involved in something that was based on her own energetic good will than she anticipated" history professor Michael Ermarth said.
"To run into these obstacles, I think some of which may appear to be hairsplitting and obstructionist would be discouraging."
Those meetings apparently served their purpose. Almost all faculty who spoke with The Dartmouth used the phrase "good listener" to describe Prager.
However, many other faculty members also said Prager realizes what it takes to be provost at a college like Dartmouth and don't believe she is leaving because the faculty opposed aspects of a project of which she was in charge.
"I think that you don't get to be provost at Dartmouth College without knowing that dealing with the faculty is like trying to heard cats," computer science chair David Nicol said. "I don't think you get to be provost at Dartmouth without having a relatively thick skin for that sort of thing."
Instead, the opinions that seem to find more general support are those expressed by Dean of the Faculty Berger.
"This sort of tempest is a very distracting thing for everybody involved ... [The stormy response to the report] was one more source of stress and diversionary activity that took ... away from forward movement," Berger said.
Berger -- who will be returning to the biology lab at the end of his term this summer -- said the furor surrounding the planning report played a part in his decision to not serve another term as dean of the faculty.
Job description
The lack of decision-making authority inherent in the provost position at Dartmouth may also have been a source of frustration for Prager.
"Being provost at Dartmouth is just a hard job," religion professor Ronald Green said. "Much of the authority and the resources and power resides with other administrators. Yet the provost has an enormous amount of responsibility and that creates problems."
Physics professor Jay Lawrence agreed with Green. Berger also expressed a similar opinion, saying of the position, "It's supposed to be the chief academic officer ... in theory. Whatever the details [of the position] are, they don't seem to be satisfying to the person in the position."
Prager and Wright said, though, that frustration is part of being an administrator. However, Prager noted that there are some problems with the way the relatively recently created provost's role at Dartmouth is structured.
"I do think there are some pieces of responsibility that probably need to be clarified at Dartmouth," she said, indicating that she plans to offer some recommendations to that effect before she leaves.
For someone as interested in the head job at an academic institution as Prager, though, being provost -- and by definition, then, being second-in-command -- may be the source of additional frustration.
"Your job is to reflect the agenda of the person who is selected for the number one job," Prager said, a task that wouldn't seem to interest someone like Prager much.
In particular, it is possible that between faculty input and reflecting Wright's vision, Prager might not have been able to put many of her own ideas into the academic planning report.
Brief stint?
While Prager has been with the College for only about two years, her decision to leave so soon is not unprecedented. Dartmouth's provosts have rarely stayed for long, especially in recent years.
Prior to Prager, Wright was provost for just a year before becoming the College president, and his predecessor, Lee Bollinger, served for only two years before leaving to become president of the University of Michigan.
In fact, the position of provost at high-caliber colleges and universities like Dartmouth could almost be described as a stepping stone to the top administrative job at institutes of higher learning.
"Anyone who accepts the job as provost at Dartmouth is not only by definition highly qualified but also highly sought after," Chairman of the Board of Trustees Bill King '56 pointed out.