By SHANNON O. WELLS
Whatever individual or individuals are chosen to lead the University Center for International Studies (UCIS)/Pitt Global, the leadership structure needs to consider both the center’s strategic as well as operational aspects — and those two elements aren’t always in harmony.
That was a take offered by Garrett Margliotti, UCIS’ inaugural director of global partnerships and partner engagement, during an April 15 forum to share ideas and concerns regarding new leadership at the center.
“There needs to be ability to work at both levels, at a highly strategic level for advancement out in the field, representing the University as Pitt Global, but also has to be at the operational level,” he said. “And sometimes that is difficult for a person to do, or the office to be managing, because … as a singular position, you’re waiting on them to return … to be back at their email. You’re waiting for them to provide guidance on certain things that they need to be weighing in on in order to move forward.”
On the other hand, the multi-structured opportunity reveals a “gap” in what it’s representing, he noted.
“I think of (Pitt Global) as the umbrella that everything falls underneath, that everything globally happens, and that Pitt umbrella is missing. If we do it as a two-person leadership, singularly, you’re missing other aspects of the institutions’ global reach and global activities,” he added, citing the example of Health Sciences, which has a “large global ecosystem” that reports to a single senior vice chancellor but is represented by Pitt Global.
“So there’s a there’s a weird dynamic that exists between (those),” he said.
Margliotti was among those who weighed in at the virtual Zoom discussion led by Kornelia Tancheva, director of the University Library System. She and Tony Delitto, associate provost for digital education, serve as co-chairs of the UCIS search advisory committee.
The committee is charged with recommending the ideal leadership structure for Pitt Global’s academic and operational efforts. The process includes the open forum on April 15 and another at 11 a.m. April 22 for members of the Pitt community to share input, including whether to continue with a single leader or take a team approach to leading the University’s global academic and operational efforts.
All members of the Pitt community are invited to take part in the forums and in a community survey. Find links to both on the provost’s website.
Introducing the April 15 session, Tancheva said feedback gathered from the two forums will be used by the search advisory committee.
“All of the members of the search committee have been asked to go back to their constituencies and collect feedback, and now we are offering those two open forums … so that we can hear from as large an audience and (as many) stakeholders as possible,” she said.
In the past, she noted, the academic and operational sides of Pitt Global have been led by a single person. “Whether the title of the person has been director of UCIS or … vice provost for international affairs or vice chancellor for international affairs and on and on and on, doesn’t really matter.”
With the departure of Ariel Armony last year, who served as vice chancellor for global affairs and director of the University Center for International Studies, the University is taking a new look at the leadership role. Armony left to become provost and executive vice president at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass.
“The provost has charged our committee to think about our organizational structure and what will best suit the current needs,” Tancheva said, “and the search advisory committee has been asked to make a recommendation about whether we should continue with a single leader or if we should take a team approach to the leadership of our global academic and operational efforts.”
Making note of the recently announced hiring freeze at Pitt through the rest of the current fiscal year, Tancheva admitted this is a “complicated time for this conversation.”
Provost Joe McCarthy, however, has asked for input by the end of the 2024-25 academic year, so UCIS and the University will be “well positioned to move forward when hiring opportunities become clearer,” she said.
“Everything that you say here will just be generalized and not attributed to specific people. And the ultimate outcome of whether we are searching for one role or two roles going forward is actually something that will become clearer after we have those recommendations to the provost, and the provost makes the decision,” she added. “We also want to know your general ideas about what Pitt’s global efforts should look like, both academically and operationally.”
Garrett Margliotti suggested that UCIS have a leader “that’s out in the field, that’s advancing Pitt Global out into admissions, maybe for alumni, for creating strategic partnerships,” along with a “core leadership team at the Pitt Global level” that includes UCIS, Global Partnerships, Health Sciences and elsewhere, “that are all at the table.”
He cited the structure of the senior vice chancellor for Pitt Research — “in Rob Rutenbar’s area, which I know that’s a big organization that does a lot more than what the global aspects do” — as something of a “case study.”
“There’s an opportunity to have a core group that is not just singularly focused within UCIS,” he added. “I think that when you look at the structure of just UCIS — sometimes people think of them as UCIS policies, things that UCIS is trying to push and it’s like, ‘No, this is Pitt Global. This is a University policy for which that person is responsible for, and sometimes it gets shoehorned into the UCIS umbrella, which sometimes is difficult to advocate for University policy when it seems like it’s just a UCIS policy.”
A key function of UCIS is overseeing visa sponsorships and making sure international students and scholars sponsored through Pitt are compliant and engaged with student life and engagement organizations.
Student Henry Moore expressed concern about international students being removed and possibly deported based on new federal executive orders.
“Something that is big to me is the fact that students are across America are disappearing, and no one knows how to reach them, no one knows where they are,” he said. “I do think that in the structure that we’re talking about, having an institution that is, I would say, ready for these situations … as they are more and more likely to come up as time goes on, this problem is likely not going to go away … so a structure that is able to adequately deal with that is probably really important.”
Molly McSweeney, UCIS assistant director for student and community engagement who runs the Global Hub in Posvar Hall, thanked Moore for adding a student perspective.
“And I’m glad that’s part of the discussion now, because I haven’t heard a lot about how this new leader can help serve students well,” she said, adding that in her role she finds students often are unfamiliar with Pitt Global and “all the amazing opportunities that we have — which is my job — and there’s a lot, and we’re fortunate to have them.”
She also noted that she doesn’t see “a lot of international students in the Global Hub, and the Global Hub is an intentionally open space meant to foster belonging and a sense of community in the Pitt community and the broader community. And yet international students are not often found here, so I find that kind of strange, for Pitt Global/UCIS to be lacking a bit.”
As the discussion shifted to the pros and cons of a single leader vs. team leadership, Henry Moore brought up ethical considerations when it comes to the goal of “essentially protecting students.
“And when you give one individual person all of those roles, I do think that could be a little challenging,” he said. “So immediately, off the bat, my assumption would be that the structure of two leaders might be better in the sense that one person is focused on one thing and another person is focused on another.”
Responding to Moore’s point, John Stoner, teaching professor and undergraduate advisor in the Department of History and UCIS’ former executive director of academic affairs, emphasized the importance of disassociating — to the degree possible — the “structural concepts from the most recent leaders of that structure.”
Noting a parallel in adding a dean of students role in the provost’s office to better facilitate face-to-face dealings with students, Stoner said that kind of expansion “literally comes at a cost … to add positions, and it’s not without political consequences as well,” because there’s often a negative perception that institutions typically add staff and cost is in leadership, “which I don’t think is fair, and I don’t think takes into account a lot of these greater needs, in Student Affairs, for example. But, optics are complicated.
Adding that he’s “not advocating for one or the other,” Stoner said there’s value in having a single leader who can be the point person in crises, go to the chancellor and regularly attend committee meetings, “and be that advocate for things.
“Now, I’m not saying that couldn’t happen with a multi-leader structure, but that’s one of the big challenges this group has, is trying to present to the provost, not just the options that we think would be best in some cost-and-value neutral environment. We can absolutely say that, but also to try to imagine what challenges might lie in whatever we advocate for and how we can anticipate what some of those challenges might be.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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