Provost's Office

Welcome to the Office of the Provost and the Division of Academic Affairs.  We work to ensure the collective academic success of faculty, staff, and students and to protect the academic integrity of the University's educational mission. 

The USM Plan (2001) established the four goals that inform our efforts as we work to achieve this mission:

• Actively embrace and support a highly regarded and enduring community of intellectual inquiry and learning.
• Deepen and enrich the organizational culture in support of inquiry and learning.
• Build a responsive and coherent curriculum aimed at student success and regional needs.
• Mobilize institutional resources in an innovative fashion through a more inclusive budget process leading to a clear alignment of budgets with plans and priorities.

We use these goals and their accompanying action steps to set our course and develop the projects we undertake each year. You can learn more about significant changes at USM by reading Transforming USM.  You may also want to find out what we have learned from our Review of Research, Creative, and Scholarly Activity or view the related Position Statement on Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity and Criteria for Evaluating Proposed USM Moving Forward Scenarios.

On the pages accessible from the list in the right column, you will find links to: USM's schools, colleges, and other Academic Affairs offices; our emerging General Education Curriculum; information about civic engagement at USM; a variety of faculty resources including the Handbook, faculty development opportunities and materials for personnel reviews; and information about the 2007-2008 Gloria S. Duclos Convocation. I hope you will find these resources helpful.

Mark B. Lapping
Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Management

For further information or problems with this page, please contact: Donna Bird