Guiding the way
New provost leads CMU’s academic vision
By Barbara Sutherland Chovanec
After a long day at work, Julia Wallace likes to unwind with volleys and drop shots.
CMU’s new provost and executive vice president moved to Mount Pleasant in January and immediately joined the Midland Tennis Club for a weekly league and drill group. Wallace also enjoys skiing, swimming, reading, and walking her dogs when she can find the time.
She’s the kind of person who likes to pack her days full of activities. Or maybe it’s just the nature of the job.
“I spend a lot of time in meetings – some days six hours of meetings with maybe 15 minutes between them,” Wallace says. “Trying to assimilate all that information and taking notes so I remember for the next time keeps me vigilant.
“I live and breathe this job,” she says, admitting that a nonstop schedule is just the nature of the No. 2 position at the university.
Wallace came to CMU after serving eight years as dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Northern Iowa. She has degrees in psychology, including a doctorate in experimental psychology from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a master’s in environmental health and preventive medicine (public health) from the University of Iowa. Her husband, Fred Fryman, a geography professor, will move to Mount Pleasant once the semester ends in Iowa.
Since arriving on campus, Wallace has thrown herself into learning the culture and academic atmosphere of the university and meeting as many people as possible. She attends lots of events in an official capacity to give remarks, but you’ll also find her at just as many concerts, theater performances, and academic lectures for fun.
“I’m certainly interested in learning the culture of the university,” she says. “There are so many questions about how large our academic programs should be, in what directions different colleges are interested in growing, and the capacity and balance by which we can do those sorts of things.
“The most challenging is keeping the academic affairs division moving forward, but still taking care of all the day-to-day activities. The things that are unique every day just constantly take up my time. But we have to find the time to really develop that academic vision and move it forward. It’s a balance between maintaining what you’ve got and moving things forward.”
Wallace says as the chief academic officer at a decentralized university, it’s important for her to lead the charge for academic continuity throughout CMU’s seven colleges.
“Each college operates independently, and therefore, in order to have an academic vision, it has to come from this office,” she says. “So I need to be able to be very visible to constantly talk about an academic vision for the university.
“I’m responsible for the quality of our degree programs, so in a sense, I’m responsible for every single diploma that comes out of this university. It’s a matter of really monitoring the quality and increasing those degree programs that I feel our incoming students are going to need to be quality citizens and get a true quality education.
“That’s the charge, and it’s a big one. You think about the number of departments, the number of programs, the number of students who walk across that stage in the spring and the fall. It’s a big responsibility to make sure they’re walking across the stage with the best that they can get.”
Settling in
To balance out all her heavy academic duties, Wallace also has enjoyed exploring campus in the spring.
“I’ve been so impressed with the physical structure of the university – I’m just in awe sometimes. So if alumni haven’t been back to campus for a while, they really need to visit, because it’s such a beautiful place.”
And she’s been enjoying some of the personally satisfying parts of the job.
“One of the best things was calling a faculty member to tell her that she won a Michigan award for great teaching – there’s nothing better than that. Hiring the new science and technology dean – being able to offer him the position and knowing that this is the person I want – that was great. Those things just really excite me.”
Wallace’s second day at CMU brought excitement of a different kind – a campuswide power outage and all-day cancellation of classes.
It was a memorable beginning and a quick introduction to residence halls staff, police officers, and others who responded to the emergency – people she wouldn’t have met under normal circumstances until weeks later.
It also was an example of CMU teamwork.
“Everyone got together to work out how we were going to get through this and make sure that the students had a hot dinner,” she says. “It was just so awesome.
“I didn’t think I’d find a place with such a close-knit community commitment to a university as I had at the University of Northern Iowa where I came from, and I’ve just been constantly impressed with the community of people here and the atmosphere of loyalty to the university. People really want to work hard for the university.”•
