A blogging provost may be the ultimate oxymoron.

A blogging provost may be the ultimate oxymoron – and that word does not mean an idiot with free radicals, though I have been accused of being something of that sort in the past. It may also be true that teaching a provost to blog is akin to the Mark Twain aphorism about teaching a pig to sing – “it wastes your time and annoys the pig.” We’ll see since the opportunity to reflect on my job, especially in this my last year before retirement, is just too tempting.

First, what does a provost do? The humorist Dave Barry pursued this conundrum best in a column on paying your taxes back in 2004.

…probably the most common question asked by taxpayers is: “What, exactly, am I allowed to deduct as a business expense?”

The answer depends on the type of work you do. For example, let’s say you’re a university provost. You can deduct any expense you want, because nobody has a clue what “provost” means. Legally, the IRS cannot touch you.

My accountant has not yet subscribed to this view. Provosts, when asked, like to say that the job of the president is to make speeches; the job of the faculty is to think; and the job of the provost is to keep the faculty from making speeches and the president from thinking.

Actually it is more prosaic than that: a provost is the chief academic officer of the university and my day to day work is to do whatever needs to be done to keep the academic and research mission of the College alive and well. It is a good job.

Right now, the job is a bit more daunting than usual because we are mired in very tough economic times. So, in times like these, it is critical that I, working closely with my staff, the deans, the faculty leadership, and the senior administration, keep us focused on both the excellence of what we do here at William & Mary and the rich opportunities that lie ahead for the College. So, my future postings will address these challenges and opportunities and, perhaps, muse a bit on a near forty year career in higher education – the last twenty of which has been in some form of administrative post or another. I may not have acquired wisdom (and colleagues who muse on my spending twenty years in academic administration might proffer that this alone is prima facie evidence of a complete absence of wisdom and judgment), but I at least have some interesting stories to tell.