This week, The Clock sat down with PSU Provost Julie Bernier. We discussed her role as Provost, her past at Plymouth and her educational goals for the university.
The Clock: How do you interpret your role as provost of the University?
Julie Bernier: Well, my official job description says that I’m the Chief Academic Officer and senior member of the cabinet who sets the academic vision and intellectual tone of the campus, but what that really translates to is that I oversee pretty much everything academic in nature. So all our academic programs, majors, minors, options, curricular changes, new initiatives and everything that comes from the faculty or the students on the academic side as opposed to the student affairs side. So all of the faculty, all of the academic departments – there’s 18 academic departments – and then working with all the academic offices, like registrar’s office, undergraduate studies, college of graduate studies, the Frost School, college of university studies, the Bagley Center, undergraduate advising, the PASS office, writing center, math center. Then, kind of unusual, in our institution, athletics is also in academic affairs division.
But what it really means, in terms of my day-to-day job, is actually my job is not much different than it was when I first started here 21 years ago as an athletic trainer. Really, I help people. I help people to succeed, I help them solve problems when things arise. When people come to me with new initiatives that are really great, I try and find ways to make that happen. So that’s really my role. Of course, [I] work with the President and the Vice-Presidents for all the other initiatives on campus, but my role as Provost is primarily academics.
TC: You have a strong past here at PSU. You’ve held many positions here over the past 20 years, from Assistant Athletic Trainer, Athletic Training Education Coordinator, then the Associated Vice President of Undergraduate Studies, and then finally Provost. How do you think that starting out at Plymouth as you did has helped you with your current role as provost?
JB: You know, in a million years I never would have thought that 21 years ago that career path would lead me to where I am. But it’s turned out to be a very good career path to prepare me for what I’m doing now. The most obvious benefit of having been here not only as long as I have but being in all of those various roles is seeing the institution from all of those angles. I started as an athletic trainer and an adjunct faculty member, so I’ve seen how things are from that angle. I was a tenure track faculty member, a department chair, and as you’ve said, Associate Vice President and went into administration.
I think the best thing about that is really knowing all of the workings of the institution and what has to happen both politically and from a practical sense, right down to the little details, so when I’m in a room and we’re talking at the 5,000 foot level about something that would be really great, my mind immediately jumps to the littlest little details and okay, this means we have to start here. I start thinking about what it means for the people that have to make it happen.
I think that has really been a benefit, because then, when we’re talking about all these grandiose plans, I can think about and advocate for the people who actually have to do all the work to make sure they have the time and the resources that they need to get it done. I can’t imagine what the learning curve would have been in this position if I hadn’t had that. Certainly, people do it all the time, they move to a new institution and start where they don’t know, but it’s really helped me a great deal.
And also knowing the people. I know so many people on campus. It makes it a lot easier to figure out how to get things done.
TC: What would you consider your greatest strength?
JB: I thought about this for a while. I don’t know if it’s a strength. I guess it translates into a strength, and it really is how much I care about this institution. I really love this institution. I love our students, and I love the people that work here, and I love the community. Yesterday I was down at the coffeeshop, sitting outside in the sun having a cup of coffee, saying hi to everybody that came by and I looked over to the person I was sitting with and said, “You know, I love it here. I absolutely love living here. I love the institution.” So I guess that does translate into a strength, because I really want to see people succeed, I want to see the University successful.
TC: What would you consider your greatest weakness?
JB: Probably patience. I often want things to happen more quickly than they sometimes can, especially when I know it’s something that is right for students and will benefit students. There’s this process that has to happen to get there, and it may not be our own doing, it may be outside the institution, so yeah, patience.
TC: What sorts of things do you enjoy doing in your free time?
JB: Well, I really enjoy the outdoors, which of course is one of the reasons I love being here and why most of the people that work here and students are attracted here, the beauty of the place. I used to be very active, played every sport you could imagine and involved in any outdoor activity including skateboarding. I have to force myself not to hop on somebody’s skateboard. What do you think the president would say if she saw me driving by on a skateboard? But now I enjoy golf and kayaking and traveling and pottery. I took up pottery about ten years ago. I took several classes with Susan Tucker from the art department and I just absolutely love that. So those are the things.
TC: It seems like there’s been a high increase in adjunct faculty teaching in Plymouth in the past few years. Does this mean in turn that there’s fewer tenure track professors? What is your opinion on the ratio of adjunct to full-time faculty at Plymouth? Do you think that this is the ideal situation for the PSU students to be learning in?
JB: I think this is a great question and I’m glad that you’ve asked the question. Actually, the size of our full-time faculty has grown. In the last ten years, there are 36 more full-time faculty working than there were ten years ago. So the faculty hasn’t shrunk. The fact is, the institution has grown. We have more students, of course, than we did 10 years ago.
What I want to say about adjuncts is that – the first thing is how fortunate we are to have the adjunct faculty that we do have. They are bright and talented and committed and experts in their fields, and they want to be here. They want to teach our students and they love our students. So they add a richness to what we can provide. There’s 197 full time faculty, and with the adjunct faculty you can bring in so much more expertise and experiences.
We have adjunct faculty that are former CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, some of the largest businesses in New England, writers, scholars, superintendents, principals – some former, some current. Some of our adjuncts have other careers at the same time, so they will bring that expertise into the classroom, which is huge for our students. In terms of the ratio, I’m actually really happy about where we are.
Two – I think it was two years ago, it might have been last fall, yeah I think it was last fall – a report came out from the AAUP, the American Association of University Professors, that showed what’s happening nationally with the ratio of adjunct faculty to full-time faculty, and nationally, the percentage of adjunct faculty is 48% to full-time 52%. That’s the national average. If you go back to ’75, the percent of adjunct faculty was 30% , so they’ve increased from 30% to 48%. Our ratio is 30% adjunct faculty to 70%. It’s about 71% to 29%, depending on how you count it, whether you count percent classes taught by or percent of full-time equivalent faculty. So it’s right around 30-70, which was the national 1975 average.
So I think we’re very good. That’s where I want to be. I’d like to see us stay about 65-35 to 70-40, because as I said, what we gain from the quality and the caring adjunct faculty we have is a great benefit to our campus and to our students. So I’m quite pleased, actually, with it.
TC: In your opinion, what do you think the students of PSU could do to improve the quality of the university?
JB: Well, first, I think the quality of the university is first-rate. I hear it all the time in our outside partners, people from the community, our alumni, graduates of our programs are stunningly good. They are writers and researchers and very very successful in whatever area they’ve chosen, and they are proud of Plymouth State. They come back and talk about what Plymouth State University – or College, for most of them, Plymouth State College – meant for them, and how it transformed their lives.
So what I would say that our current students could do is to recognize that and to be proud. To be proud about who they are, to be proud about being Plymouth State students and to recognize that everything they do reflects on the University that will one day be their alma-mater. When students are recognized for doing something great in the community or get an award or students get a Fulbright scholarship, people say, “Wow! Look at those Plymouth State students, they’re doing great things at Plymouth State.” The opposite’s also true. When a student behaves badly, people don’t say, “Oh, look at John and Jenny, they at what they did,” they say, “Look what those Plymouth State students are doing.”
So recognizing that both good and bad reflects back on the institution, being proud of where they are, and taking pride in the institution. Last week I was walking over to the HUB and I was following a student and I watched him pick up some trash as he walked and he threw it in the garbage on his way in the door, and I said, “Thank you!” and he said, “Oh, no problem, this is my home too, and I’m really proud to be here. I want it to look nice.” So that kind of attitude – and I was proud of him for thinking that way.
TC: What are your educational goals for PSU?
JB: Well, keeping all the things alive that are really good about PSU now, really valuing and cherishing the things that make Plymouth what it is, what we love, even though we know we will evolve and change, we’ll be holding on to the things that are most important. In order to do that, we do need to make changes, because the world around us is changing. You know, all you have to do is watch the news for ten minutes and realize that.
I’d like to see us – and we are – working really hard to make curricula changes that help students be successful, help students graduate in a timely fashion, which translates into not spending more than students need to to get their education, you know, to graduate in four years. The faculty are engaging this year in the process of curricular revision. They are looking at student outcomes. What it is that they believe that students should have and know and be able to do, and making revisions in their program to match that and specifically looking at where there might be barriers that slow students down, bottlenecks or hoops that are unnecessary. So all of the departments are doing that this year and that’s going to be tremendous and it’s going to make a difference for students and for faculty.
In five years, the All-Well Center will be well underway and that’s really exciting. You know, I’m personally excited about it, because of my background coming from athletics, but seeing what the impact will be on the entire campus. You know, first it will be an academic home for health and human performance and be able to reintegrate academics and athletics and recreation on one site. That’s going to be a tremendous asset. But providing that space to the general student population, an ice arena for – just for being fans, for one, and not having to drive to Waterville Valley – but being able to learn new activities, skating and hockey, or whatever we might do. I don’t know if we might have broomball and curling, probably. Just the opportunities for the students as we go through the phases with their new field house and aquatic center and field. So in five years we will be partway through that.
And then lastly, I think, probably having a bigger impact than we do now, and we have a pretty big impact right now in the region, but we have so many faculty and students that are reaching out to the Lakes region and the north country, creating partnerships, finding ways that we can use our intellectual resources to benefit the communities. So in five years I think we’ll see a lot more of that and of the greater impact in the area.