From Scramble to Process: Achieving Proactive Leadership via Design

Academic leaders face countless demands on their time, making it all too easy to fall into a reactive mode. But taking a proactive approach makes it far easier to achieve overarching strategic goals, such as inclusion, equity, interdisciplinarity, or targeted growth. This talk will share examples from finance, personnel, curriculum, and training to illustrate how designing and instituting processes can provide greater clarity and closer adherence to a unit’s mission.

Dr. Elizabeth H. Simmons is the Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of California San Diego. In this capacity, she serves as UC San Diego’s chief academic officer and is responsible for policies and decisions relating to all academic programs and curriculum, instructional support programs, and faculty appointments and performance.

Dr. Simmons previously served as Associate Provost for Faculty and Academic Staff Development, Dean of Lyman Briggs College, and University Distinguished Professor of Physics at Michigan State University (MSU).

Simmons is a theoretical high-energy physicist whose research focuses on the origins of the masses of the elementary subatomic particles, especially the top quark. She is currently studying how physics beyond the Standard Model might manifest in experiments in progress at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. She enjoys teaching physics courses at all levels, from introductory to graduate, and a central tenet of her mission as an educator is to encourage students from groups under-represented in physics to consider studies and careers in the physical sciences.