At the conclusion of a national search, Wendy Sternberg, previously the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College at Occidental College, was announced as Bucknell’s new provost in February of this year. Provost Sternberg began officially working in the role this summer, and this week “The Bucknellian” had a chance to sit down with her to discuss what brought her to Bucknell, how she plans to connect with students and her goals in the position.
Q: A lot of students may not fully understand what the position of Provost entails. Tell us more about your role here on campus.
Here at Bucknell, each of the three colleges has an academic leader, but there is another layer of administrative structure that is university-wide, and that’s the provost role. As Provost, I am responsible for all elements of the academic program, the academic experience of students inside and outside the classroom, all of the support structures that help students succeed both at Bucknell now and in the future. It is my great honor and responsibility to be in charge of all of that, but it is such a collaborative role. It is really a team that is responsible for the delivery of the academic program, but I am ultimately responsible for the decisions that are made.
Q: You already have a very impressive résumé working at Union College, Haverford College and Occidental College in a variety of academic leadership positions. What led you to Bucknell?
While I was a student [at Union], I decided that I never wanted to leave college. My connection to liberal arts colleges and institutions started as a student and really developed as a faculty member. I just love this environment. I love the close relationships between students and faculty. I was a professor for 18 years. I started taking on more administrative responsibilities, and I found the work really enjoyable and interesting. I loved that I could have an impact beyond my own students by supporting faculty and their work with students. Every career move that I’ve made, it’s always been about supporting faculty and that faculty-student relationship and the kind of learning that happens in these kinds of institutions which I deeply believe in. I didn’t think I would leave Occidental, but Bucknell seemed really interesting to me. I saw this opportunity at Bucknell that was not only an opportunity to continue in the liberal arts context and have a really strong arts and sciences focus but also have these other kinds of disciplines that really engaged students in different kinds of skill development and different kinds of thinking and different kinds of aspirations that they can achieve with these different kinds of learning. It has been such a great transition for me to not only continue serving that whole ethos that has been so important to me for my entire adult life, really since I went away from college, but to do so in a different context.
As the provost, you have a lot less interaction with students than faculty do. How do you find ways to connect with the student body and be accessible to students?
I’ve thought about this a lot. The one thing I really do miss about being a faculty member is connecting with students. It is a feature of my role that my interaction with students and my impact on students in some ways is indirect because it happens through faculty, so I have had to find ways to seek out that kind of engagement with students. I tend to engage with students on governance structures where students are involved, and that’s happened throughout my career, but I also try to develop individual relationships with students. In every one of my former roles, I had student advisees. I could satisfy that desire to get to know really interesting and intelligent and motivated and wonderful students just for the sake of having those kinds of relationships, but also see from the students’ eyes how the academic program works. Having advisees really does help me be better at my work and see where some of those gaps are, so I do hope in the future to have student advisees. I do make myself available if student groups want to learn more about something; I’m happy to be part of those discussions. I am always open to talking to students, and I hope what’s clear is the experience of being a student at a liberal arts college and the experience of being a professor of students at liberal arts institutions, that is what drives my work.
What would you say are your primary goals or changes that you hope to pursue as provost?
I don’t see that my role is to come in and fix things or shake things up. I am here to support faculty and the work that they do with students, and I know that there are challenges at every institution. I think there are some growing pains here at Bucknell with the relatively new [Freeman College of Management] that has come along, whereas others have been here for quite a number of years. So I [want to work] with the Deans of the three colleges, find ways for the academic program as a whole to be more integrated and for there to be less silo-ing and more collaboration to really support those natural points of synergy. It’s easy to think of these three colleges as independent units, but if you look at the work that’s being done by faculty in these colleges, the things that they’re teaching in their classrooms and the work that students are doing, these are not things that are uniquely assigned in one discipline or area of study. There’s a lot of cross-fertilization that really just needs to be supported and uplifted and recognized for the unique things that Bucknell can do because of the wide range of intellectual approaches that are present. I just think there’s great opportunity here for that kind of collaboration, so I’m looking forward to working with the faculty on those kinds of things that really only Bucknell can do, and I think that’s really where I’d like to focus my energies.
Tell us something about yourself that students may find interesting!
I was part of the Guinness-World-Record-Setting largest Water Aerobics class. In Southern California, I was part of a masters swim team. I loved it, and I swam every morning, six in the morning, for several years. That’s my fun fact!