U of A provost finalist: Serving diverse population remains a responsibility

“We don’t want to panic over this,” Bernhard said at an open forum Thursday, when asked how he would handle diversity, equity and inclusion issues now that the Trump administration has ordered universities to end DEI programs or lose federal funding.

“We don’t want to pre-comply, we don’t want to over-comply,” Bernhard told the nearly 50 in-person attendees and more than 250 watching online. He said this was also the attitude he picked up from UA’s provost search committee. “We want to understand exactly what it is we need to do to comply, and we have to comply. At the end of the day, if we don’t comply, it’s going to be even worse for the very populations we want to protect.”

He said university leaders should think about how current conversations around DEI affect students, and make sure students from all backgrounds feel welcome and have communities and support resources.

Bernhard, executive vice provost for academic affairs at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, as well as interim associate chancellor and vice provost for budget and resource planning there, is the third of four finalists for UA provost and senior vice president for academic affairs to visit campus for in-person interviews. The first two, Eric Barker and Jenna Rickus, are both administrators at Purdue University. The fourth candidate’s identity has not yet been announced by UA officials.

Bernhard told the Arizona Daily Star he is drawn to the provost position here due to UA’s history, legacy and significance as a land-grant institution. He said every university has issues and the UA’s recent budget deficit, which is expected to be resolved by July 1, is just a part of a bigger picture.

At the forum, Bernhard spent about 15 minutes discussing student success. While graduation rates are a “headline indicator of student success,” he said it is also important to look at students graduating on time, taking full advantage of opportunities the UA offers, having a full range of experiences including getting involved in leadership, studying abroad, and taking on internships and research projects.

Further factors emphasized by Bernhard included financial aid and fulfilling the basic needs of students; making the first-year experience great by building communities and cohorts; offering resources such as mental health support; empowering academic advisors to support students and their struggles; and addressing systemic barriers students are struggling with and resolving them.

“So, there’s some systemic, high-level things we can be doing to promote student success. But I think it’s, again, tremendously important to our fundamental mission and fundamental value, value proposition of higher education,” he said. “We teach a lot of students, we teach them well, we are committed to that, and how we can continue to improve is so vital to the future, not just of the U of A but of higher education.”

Asked about cases of law enforcement officials being involved in university situations, Bernhard cited the example of on-campus protests and said university leaders need to talk about the “big strategy” of how they’ll respond.

“I think there are two aspects of this,” he said. “One is the pre-conversation and it’s having clear policies, as clear as possible, about the conditions under which universities would escalate in this way, and clear expectations about follow through — having that understanding ahead of time is tremendously important.”

“The second thing is to be as transparent as possible after the fact,” Bernhard continued. “There are things that can’t be shared for a variety of legal and personnel reasons, but (we) got to do the best to go out and explain ‘here’s why the decision is made. Here are the processes that we follow. Here are the processes we’re going to use to evaluate those consequences’.”

The current political climate for universities is difficult and complicated, Bernhard said, without elaborating, but added it’s important to talk about academic freedom and freedom of speech.

“We are talking more about some of the challenges around that, what it means for us as a community and how we navigate these issues,” Bernhard said, referring to current strategies at his University of Illinois campus. Surfacing those “underlying issues” will in the long run be “tremendously” beneficial to the university and its community, he said.

He discussed an issue that came up at UIUC a few years ago regarding departmental political statements, where one wing of the university’s Faculty Senate thought they were a violation of academic freedom according to the American Association of University Professors.

“So, we talked about the importance of having defined processes around the decision,” said Bernhard, a political scientist who most recently authored a book on Congress titled Legislative Style. “… We talked about the importance of, rather than just the department making a statement, maybe having everyone sign on to the statement.”