Interview with CDU Interim
Provost Dr. Sylvia Manning
This conversation was developed as an acknowledgment of the hard work and commitment exhibited over the past 2 ½ years by Interim Provost Sylvia Manning. She has played a vital role during a heady time when the University was being acknowledged for its innovation as a nearly sixty-yearold institution with high aspirations, amid the looming prospect of starting the first 4-Year medical school in South Los Angeles, wrestling with enrollment issues faced by many schools in the post-COVID era, and adapting to the ever-knotty issues associated with interdepartmental collaboration tied to the challenges of diversification and growth.
Here is a quote from COM Dean Deborah Prothrow- Stith regarding Dr. Manning’ s contribution to the University,“ Provost Manning has had a remarkably productive 2 ½ year tenure. I will be forever grateful for her support in the creation of the new medical school. We are saying goodbye to a topnotch leader.”
Dr. Manning was appointed at the same time that the University had decided to deepen its commitment to the students it was educating, positioned against the backdrop of the community primarily being served. She has been outspoken in her support of President Carlisle and her colleagues as a fellow senior administrator. She didn’ t phone it in and take a backseat placeholder role. Instead, she utilized her many years of experience and keen sense that included time as a university president to add a reasonable voice to the complexities of navigating the forever conundrum, aka, the academic institution-building process.
The interview has been edited for brevity. Many thanks to Dr. Manning for her gracious responses.
-Editor
You stepped into your position and made an immediate impact. To what do you attribute that?
I think that was mostly because there was a presenting issue. That is to say, I’ ve taken these positions, and whoever
hired me has said,“ Yeah, everything’ s fine. There’ s nothing really going on here. But we need somebody to keep the seat warm.” But here, there was a presenting issue. What I had been told was that the Academic Senate and the Board of Trustees were at an impasse on the revised constitution and bylaws of the Senate. And that needed to be solved.
Which, oddly enough, had many similarities to the presenting problem when I was the interim president at Western U. It was almost uncanny. But it meant that I came here with a very clear sense that the first thing I had to do other than meet people and learn more about the institution, was to learn more about this impasse, why it was happening, and to work on mediating it and getting us past it. So, I had something very concrete right from the start.
A lot of what was going on was a failure of communication. And a lot of what enabled this to move forward successfully, was that the board chair and a couple of board members took the initiative to meet with the leadership of the Senate. To have a private sit-down meeting in which they said,“ Hey, we’ re all on the same mission. We all share the same values. We must get this into a fashion that’ s workable.” And on both sides, there was complete agreement about what we care about fundamentally.
People were very eager to solve the problem. And then as we worked this out, it became apparent that one of the ways to resolve this was to simplify and clarify our faculty titles, and then define things like who votes in the General Assembly. It was very helpful at a moment like that to be an outsider, to be an interim. Because as an interim, the one thing you have is, it’ s kind of obvious to everybody that you don’ t have a dog in this race.
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 12