New Interim Associate Provost of Faculty Affairs, Bruce Liby Ph.D. MANHATTAN.EDU / COURTESY
Brooke Della Rocco and Jonathan Stewart, News Editor and Contributor
Manhattan University has announced the appointment of Bruce Liby, Ph.D., as the interim associate provost of faculty affairs.
As associate provost, Liby oversees and primarily focuses on academic affairs such as coordinating curriculums, supporting new academic programs, improving teaching and learning and improving study abroad programs, while also working hand-in-hand with the interim provost when it comes to supporting faculty with their concerns and needs.
Before stepping into this role, Liby was a professor at MU for over 25 years, spending nine years as the chair of the Department of Physics (now the Department of Mathematics and Physics) and three years as chair of the Council for Faculty Affairs (CFA). Liby has crafted a diverse and involved career at MU, frequently delving into faculty matters as a member himself.
According to manhattan.edu, “As a recognized expert in nonlinear optics, interferometry, perceptual physics, and physics education, Dr. Liby has worked alongside a diverse group of students and colleagues across multiple disciplines throughout his tenure.”
A restructuring of the provost’s office was recently put into effect, with Bridget Chalk Ph.D., the previous associate provost, moving to the interim provost position. As of August, there is also an assistant provost position, now filled by Andy Burns.
Liby spoke to The Quadrangle about his goals in this position, including addressing faculty concerns while revising the current class schedule to better accommodate the MU community. Liby emphasized how a more collaborative format may be beneficial.
“I’d like to see a lot more communication everywhere on campus,” Liby said. “We get sort of siloed, because we live in our own world every day and [do] not need to get too involved outside of that…There’s a lot of places where we need to collaborate and make better use of our resources between the schools and I’d like to help facilitate that process.”
Interim Provost Bridget Chalk, Ph.D., spoke about what she hopes to achieve with Liby and the similarities between their style of work.
“One thing we really want to do is to bridge any sort of perceived divide between administration and faculty,” Chalk said. “Both of us come from faculty roles, understand the particular pressures on faculty, but also worked on different sorts of projects beyond just research and teaching and have an understanding of institutional priorities and how to move those forward.”
Liby spoke more about how he views the concerns within the faculty and hopes to remedy them.
“Faculty in particular are overloaded,” Liby said. “In addition to being good instructors, they’re also expected to be doing scholarship and research and doing service for the college. Of course, there are a lot fewer faculty than there were just a couple of years ago, by a significant number…And yet, all of that service work, everything that still needs to be done even though there are fewer students, it all still needs to be done and there’s fewer people to do it. That’s a big problem.”
Liby takes on this position with a positive outlook, hoping to enforce change and communication throughout the institution.
“I’m pretty jazzed about having a new and different responsibility,” Liby said. “I’m pretty excited about that…We’ll see what happens.”