Third vice chancellor candidate visits campus

At the University of Texas at Austin, Richard Lariviere called on students to give him their impressions of each department in the College of Liberal Arts.

Some input was insightful, he said, and some was rather ill-informed.

But in the end, Lariviere believes, students saw that their ideas mattered. Lariviere is the two-time recipient of the Eyes of Texas Award for his contributions to student life at the University of Texas.

“It’s one of the high points of my academic career,” he told a group of Kansas University employees Monday.

Lariviere is dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.

He is the third candidate to visit KU for the position of provost and executive vice chancellor.

David Shulenburger, who has held the position for more than a decade, will be stepping down later this year.

Two finalists already have visited campus: Virginia Sapiro, interim provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Jack Burns, vice president for academic affairs and research for the University of Colorado System. The final candidate will visit campus later this week.

Lariviere’s academic interests are Sanskrit language and literature and classical and modern Hindu law. At UT, he holds the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities. He can read seven foreign languages and speak French and Hindi.

Among his successes at UT, Lariviere points to the recruitment of more diverse faculty members, the successful completion of a $120 million capital campaign, and the doubling of external research.

When asked about his leadership style he jokingly said it is “without error.” On a more serious note, he said he is not a micro-manager, but believes in finding the right people for various positions.

Dwindling public support for higher education is a challenge for many institutions, he said.

“I suspect you’re not done raising tuition,” he said.

In an ideal world tuition would be free, he said, but that’s not possible and those who can afford to pay will have to. The university also must tap alumni to make investments, he said.

Lariviere, an Illinois native, received a bachelor’s degree at the University of Iowa and a doctoral degree in Asian studies from the University of Pennsylvania.

He has been at UT since 1982. Prior to that, he was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Iowa and a visiting lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania.

The final candidate is Karen Gould, a professor of French and Francophone studies and dean of the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati.

Gould received a bachelor’s degree from Occidental College in Los Angeles, a diploma from La Sorbonne in France, and a doctoral degree from the University of Oregon. She has been at Cincinnati since 2001.

She will give a public presentation at 4 p.m. Thursday at the Dole Institute of Politics on KU’s west campus.