One Vice Provost To Rule Them All

UMass Boston is looking for a new Vice Provost to replace an irreplaceable incumbent

Inspired by the Babbling Beaver

Good news! Amidst the booming faculty hires taking place at UMass Boston, we are also looking to hire a Vice Provost for Academic Support Services… Shit, we forgot the name change. It’s now Vice Provost for Student Equity, Access and Success (VP-SEAS), because academic support - out. Equity - in.

It’s actually bittersweet news, because we loved our current VP-SEAS, Linda Scandalera (she/ella); but now, after serving her mandatory three years, she is leaving us for greener pastures. We, here, at UMass Boston recognized her unique and exceptional talent at once, while she was still our PhD student in the College of Education and Human Development; incidentally, our current Provost was the Dean of that college at the time. We were so impressed by her that we hired her without a search, straight after her defense, and without her ever having a tenured academic position. Some would say it’s not appropriate, but all our doubts were put to rest after we read her earth-shattering doctoral thesis, with its focused on LatinX students; it

utilizes a Critical Race-Grounded Theory approach in partnership with LatCrit and the Latino Cultural Wealth framework to explore the ways in which exceptional faculty in public Hispanic-Serving community colleges successfully bridge theory and practice to enact culturally sustaining praxis…

Culturally Sustaining Praxis creates intentional puentes between epistemic values, pedagogical stances and cultural wealth that result in culturally sustaining learning environments that support all campus members in becoming agents of counter-hegemony, in that they possess values, skills and ways of knowing that enable them to dismantle systemic inequities on and off campus.

The only reason we waited for her get her PhD was because (what a pity!) a PhD was required for the job: we would have hired her earlier if we only could. We knew she only had experience with community colleges, but it fit right into our grand plan of converting UMass Boston into four-year community college. All the pieces fit perfectly.

Subsequently, we paid her, at the moment of her hire, more than we pay most of our full professors after years of service! All exceptional talent must be rewarded.

But alas, all good things must come to an end, and now she abandons us. We are heartbroken, but the show must go on.

This is not a job to be taken lightly. VP-SEAS plays a crucial role in propagating the right kind of policies and ideas through the institution. Our outgoing VP-SEAS is a shining example of what we are looking for, so we modeled our ad having her achievements in mind, namely:

• VP-SEAS Linda Scandalera led the advancement of our university’s first strategic priority: Holistic Student Success. To this end, she advanced equitable academic outcomes and implemented data-informed and equity-minded practices.

  The chief example of that initiative is the preservation of the unproctored nature of our ALEKS math placement test. To this day, students can holistically and equitably cheat their way into advanced math courses they have no chance of passing, fail them multiple times, and add booming revenues to UMB’s pirate chests. But don’t you worry, it was all fair equitable: Students of all demographics cheated equally equitably in equal measure (oh, that Newspeak!).

• VP-SEAS Linda Scandalera instilled a firm commitment to equity and a culture of inclusion in that faculty’s and staff’s minds. If said faculty and staff raised questions, she applied the 3D rule that guides our administration - deny, deflect, disengage: equity über alles.

• VP-SEAS Linda Scandalera supported the Office of the Provost in assessing and improving the student learning outcomes. In particular, she helped the former Associate Provost for Alternative Facts, Anna Savant, to weave the ass intelligence teachings in the STEM coursework.

• Last but not least, the reproductive work. VP-SEAS Linda Scandalera helped to recruit, onboard, and supervise new associate and assistant vice provosts and provistinos, since no number of associate and assistant vice provosts is ever sufficient.

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Are you the replacement we’re looking for? Think twice before you apply - you have REALLY big shoes to fill.