William Tate, one of the candidates for vice president of academic affairs and provost, met with student leaders and answered their questions on Tuesday.
Tate is currently the dean and vice provost of graduate education at Washington University in St. Louis and the second candidate to visit USC's campus. The last candidate, John Wiencek, will visit campus Thursday.
How do you think you would take that concern for what the students have, in a role like provost, which is very high up and for a lot of students kind of removed from the general student body?
“Now, what I try to do every year with the grad students, we meet, and they tell me, they actually give me a strategic plan. And I formalize the information flow with the grad students at Wash U and said, ‘Every year I'd like you to get together, think about what your experience was like, and then give me some priorities to work on for the next year.’ And then we work on them all year long. And I report out at our graduate council meetings how we're doing on those priorities and dead-end of the year giving them a written report. And we've done that every year for the last six years. It's proven to be quite effective.”
What do you think the biggest issue is facing graduate students, and, like, how would you plan to tackle that?
“I would say one of the issues that most of us think about, our mental health, as a huge part of is a stressful environment. I want to say anxiety and depression is usually around 20, 21. So it's right at that time when you're segueing in between undergrad and grad for the traditional student … That isolation leads to really a lot of stress and anxiety. And so, I think that's a critical part of what has to be dealt with. And we need a public health perspective on prevention in graduate education related to mental health.”
What do you see as the future of academia and sort of, what are your kind of ideas to be at the forefront of that?
“So it's going to be in a race to innovate. And those innovations might come in many form or fashion, they might be different ways of doing classes, it might be more hybrid, online environments. There are going to be a lot of things they're going to have to try to control for the cost parameters to survive. I know that's a big South Carolina thing.”
What do you plan to do to listen and to help bring people together and to kind of be that communicator and the mesh that holds and brings people back together?
“I say, I'm coming here, and I'm standing next to your president, and we're saying we're going to work together to make the very best South Carolina we can make ... I hope that would communicate to people that at least, from my perspective, I have great regard for the president and that — that it's time for him to move forward in a very positive way. And secondly, it would be my hope that we would be able to not only have that image, but then operationalize our efforts to really max out what we can do here and just really be a good team and I think demonstrate what that means … If nothing else in my presence here, I hope it signals that I want you to be the best you can be. Like, it's not really about me. It's really about the institution.”
Editor’s Note: Erin Slowey, the editor-in-chief of The Daily Gamecock, attended the meeting in her official capacity as editor-in-chief. Slowey did not vote or express any opinions about the candidate.