Provost Stanley Chodorow: Penn's chief academic

Before coming to Penn, Chodorow was an associate vice chancellor and dean of arts and humanities at the University of California at San Diego. This year, he was a finalist in the searches for a new president at the University of Michigan and a new chancellor at the University of California at Los Angeles, but he will remain at Penn -- at least for now. During his time here, Chodorow has been intimately involved in implementing Rodin's Agenda for Excellence. His main focus has been the 21st Century Project on the Undergraduate Experience and the development of prototypes for the new "residential community" system at the University. Even after only three years in office, Chodorow is no stranger to campus controversy. Student leaders criticized him throughout the drafting of a new judicial charter and code of academic integrity in 1995 and 1996, saying he wanted to scrap mediation and disciplinary strategies favored by a student committee for procedures more favorable to faculty members' wishes. After a prolonged confrontation, students and the provost reached agreement on the final version. Chodorow has also been jeered by the lesbian, gay and bisexual community for not acting to remove the University's Reserve Officers Training Corps program from campus. Because of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuality, many critics feel ROTC violates the University's own policies barring discrimination. After negotiating with the Defense Department for almost two years in hopes of reaching an "arm's length" agreement that would permit Penn students to participate in ROTC at another campus in the Philadelphia region, Chodorow announced last April that the ROTC program would remain in its current status at Penn. Chodorow's office oversees many key departments and programs directly, including the deans of all 12 schools, Information Systems and Computing, the library system and the Division of University Life. Chodorow himself is a noted medieval legal historian, who enjoys bicycling and gourmet cooking in his spare time. In addition to being provost, Chodorow has an appointment as a History professor. For the past two years, he has taught an undergraduate honors seminar called "Origins of Constitutionalism."