Michael Amiridis is like the director of a play.
You might see him if you stop by rehearsal, but you don’t see him during the show — he stays behind the curtain, making sure everything on stage goes as planned, as rehearsed, as it should. You probably wouldn’t recognize him on the street. It’s the actor’s face you remember.
He came in as director — to continue the metaphor — right after the theater’s budget was slashed, leaving virtually no money for sets or costumes and certainly not to pay new actors. His rehearsal time was nixed.
Regardless, the show had to go on.
The theater was USC. The sets and costumes were programs and renovations. The actors were faculty.
And the director was the provost.
DRESS REHEARSAL
Amiridis, 52, didn’t go into academics to be an administrator.
But after 21 years at USC — six as provost — Amiridis is leaving Columbia this month to serve as chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Long before he set foot in the Office of the Provost, long before the Great Recession hit and long before he bonded over Greek food with USC President Harris Pastides, Amiridis was a chemical engineering professor, eager to dive into academia at the ground level.
He was brought on in 1994 as part of a university push to bring more researchers to campus, particularly in the College of Engineering.
Years later, after rising through the ranks of the college, serving as department chair and dean, he worked to bring more of a focus to teaching in the engineering school, the flipside of what he’d been hired to do in the '90s.
“I felt like I was walking on water,” he said. “Of course, I didn’t know anything.”
After a few years as dean, Amiridis was looking to provost jobs. But Vice Provost Harry Ploehn, who worked with Amiridis in the engineering department at the time, didn’t want to see him go.
Ploehn knew his colleague was up for USC’s provost position, and when he ran into Pastides on the Horseshoe one day, he didn't hesitate to give the president his two cents.
“I said, ‘You have to keep him. He’s the natural,’” Ploehn said.
But Pastides didn’t need any convincing. He saw the same thing Ploehn did.
ACT I
Amiridis walked into the Office of the Provost in August 2009.
It was one year after Pastides settled into his own office and got the news of the first of several dramatic budget cuts USC saw in 2008.
The Great Recession was hitting South Carolina, and higher education was feeling the pain.
“Somebody had to do the job, and I was facing the consequences, whether I was in this office or whether I was in my office as dean of engineering,” Amiridis said. “So instead of just facing the consequences at my level, I decided it was my opportunity to try to solve the problem.”
But USC fired no one during or after the recession. There were no furloughs.
The university’s hiring process did freeze, however, and more than 270 employees left for other jobs or retired, but existing positions weren’t cut as a cost-saving measure. Instead, USC brought in more and more students and raised tuition higher and higher to make up for the lack of state funding.
That meant there were more students on campus, and they were paying more for their education.
Quantity was on the rise, but it was unclear whether quality would do the same.
Enter: the Faculty Replenishment Hiring Initiative (FRI).
It was a way to ensure faculty members hired were up to snuff — retired professors were replaced and experienced faculty replaced them, a real change of pace after years of hiring younger, less experienced professors who came at a lower cost.
When the plan was introduced in 2011, the goal was 200 new professors by the 2015-2016 school year.
“Most of our revenue growth had been through a strategic move to increase the student body size and maintain the faculty-to-student ratio at a quality we could be proud of,” Ploehn said. “We had to hire more faculty. It’s simple math.”
Today, around 175 tenure-track faculty members have been hired. Funding for the remaining hires is set aside with the positions to be filled later this year.
But the FRI came at a price — the first 120 new faculty members hired came to the tune of $5 million.
Nevertheless, it remained a priority.
“Things got cut just so we could come out of things,” said Gene Warr, chairman of USC’s board of trustees. “That was one thing I think there was just an agreement on that we couldn’t afford to cut."
THE ACTORS
Amiridis an engineer by trade; he learns best by doing. By nature, he's a people-person. He learns even better when he’s talking with someone else.
When he took over as provost, Amiridis wasn’t shy about how little he knew about other departments on campus. He didn’t pretend to understand their needs or priorities.
Instead, he visited every department, talked to every dean and heard it from them.
“I know I wasn’t the only one who said, ‘Is that really the best use of your time in your first year as provost?’” said Dennis Pruitt, vice president for student affairs. “But he was able to go out and get an institutional assessment from the ground roots … and make a strategic plan for what needed to advance.”
Those one-on-one sessions built a sense of trust between the deans and new provost.
For Mary Anne Fitzpatrick, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, it was satisfying to work with a provost whose plans aligned with hers.
For Tony Ambler, dean of the College of Engineering, he appreciated the fact that the provost kept ties with the college and kept himself accessible.
Developing that relationship with the deans was crucial for Amiridis, who has always emphasized the importance of faculty to his staff in the provost office.
“He tells me to never forget that I’m faculty first,” Interim Provost Helen Doerpinghaus said.
He stresses the dean-provost relationship, so it will trickle down colleges, departments and classrooms.
The faculty are the owners of the institution, he said — he works with faculty, so faculty will work with students.
“What is key and central in this experience?” he asked. “It’s the faculty members — who you’re going to associate with, who you’re going to be taught by, who you’re going to be mentored by, who’s going to guide you in the next steps of your career.”
ACT II
USC’s state funding has started to come back up a bit over the last few years, but it’s still far from the $165 million the Columbia campus saw cut from the legislature in 2007.
Instead of issuing a sweeping cry for funding every fiscal year, the university has proposed specific plans to the legislature in hopes of getting funding for certain projects.
“I think what we’re going to see in the future from South Carolina is potentially some financial help along targeted initiatives,” he said. “It’s not going to be a blank check or a ‘Thank you for what you have endured over the last few years and therefore we’re restoring it.’”
System-wide initiatives like Palmetto College, USC’s online degree program, have remained high on the university’s priority list, even through times of financial uncertainty. The focus is on specific ideas and programs legislators can envision results stemming from, not broad ideas.
“There is nothing better than to have that top level support,” said Susan Elkins, chancellor of Palmetto College. “There is no better chance of success than to have that top-level leadership.”
Amiridis also worked to establish the university’s Dashboard, a grading system for the university. It takes into account SAT scores, faculty-to-staff ratios and a myriad of other factors national surveys often look to.
“The quantitative measures gave us things to really think about when we were growing,” former Faculty Senate Chair Sandra Kelly said. “It would be really easy to lose sight of some of these things if we didn’t have quantification.”
Higher education is fast-paced — needs for funding and space and support come in rapidly, oftentimes faster than the resources do. To combat that imbalance, universities are always looking for the next big thing.
Or as Pruitt calls it, the NBT.
“And [Amiridis] has always been one step ahead of the NBT,” Pruitt said.
BACKSTAGE
Students don’t know Amiridis like they know Pastides. Pastides is visible — a staple of the university community, always out shaking hands and kissing babies.
But that’s not in the provost’s job description. However, just about every aspect of the university crosses the provost’s desk.
“Students see what they see. They see their courses, they see their major, they see their opportunities,” Kelly said. “They shouldn’t really be caring about the higher administration of the university and the only time they should is when there’s a problem. The fact that they don’t really know who he is means he’s done a really good job.”
It’s not that he has avoided students — his job doesn’t deal with them directly.
“He cares so much about the students and the quality of education we’re receiving here,” said Student Body President Lindsay Richardson. “He wants to make sure that’s accessible and that’s affordable and as high of quality as possible.”
Though the FRI was a faculty-centered initative, it was implemented for the students — if tuition is rising, Amiridis said, students should be getting their money’s worth with quality instruction.
“Most of the things that I do, most of the students on campus don’t know about, but that’s the nature of the position here,” he said.
“But they’re affected by them. That’s the difference.”
FINALE
Amiridis will ship out to the Windy City next week, but he's in limbo until then.
“Two states, two schools,” he said. “Too much uncertainty.”
Pastides has been adamant that the provost’s office won’t be empty long — he’d like to see someone in there by the start of next semester.
Some faculty have been openly skeptical about the plan for a rather quick turnaround, but Amiridis doesn’t doubt it will happen.
“When Harris wants to make something happen,” Amiridis said, “he does.”
Senate Faculty Chair James Knapp is a member of the provost search committee. What kind of qualities is he looking for? “The ability to work with the president, a broad command of education enterprise, comfortable working with people.”
The same ones Amiridis has shown over the years, he said.
And it seems like he's making a habit of stepping into jobs looking at the brink of financial crisis.
In his first spending plan in office, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner proposed massive cuts to higher education funding in his first spending plan in office — his “turnaround budget” recommends a 31.5 percent reduction for collegiate funds.
If enacted, the University of Illinois system would take a big hit, nearly $209 million.
Amiridis said he really doesn’t know much about UIC's financial situation yet; nonetheless, he’s already considering enrollment increases and ways to bring more students to Chicago from other states and countries.
“It’s starting all over again for me,” he said. “I wish I didn’t have to do it all again, but we’ll figure it out when we get there.”
Amiridis has met a few deans and students, but he has spent little time there since he accepted the position in December.
He’s in for his fair share of changes: UIC is an urban campus; more students commute to class; the weather is, well, colder.
“It’s just a different mindset,” Pastides said. “He can’t go in and bring a Carolina mindset.”
He will, however, bring what he calls the “Carolina model” — he’s seen how USC has succeeded and where its faltered, and he’s seen the school through both.
“Everything that I learned, I learned it here,” he said. “And this is what I’m taking with me.”