Last word with Ron Daniels | Audio

Listen to excerpts from reporter Kathy Wang's interview with Provost Ron Daniels.

Provost Ron Daniels will become president of Johns Hopkins University next month. The Daily Pennsylvanian sat down with him to reflect on his tenure at Penn and his plans for Hopkins. Below are excerpts from the interview.

The Daily Pennsylvanian: What would you consider your most significant contributions to Penn?

Ron Daniels: The international agenda was something [Penn] President [Amy] Gutmann was quite anxious to have me focus upon when I came to Penn and something I felt quite passionate about. The task is not just to create an international experience where you send students out and they come back to campus . but rather, how do you make the campus feel distinctly international in character?

We've been able to strengthen Penn's activities in that area - the Penn World Scholars Program, . the Distinguished Visitors Program, . Writers Without Borders at the Kelly Writers House [and] . the Global Forum . where [Nicholas Kristof] was very effective at challenging the Penn community to do better and to stretch out students' sense of possibility when they leave campus.

That's complemented by some of the programs we've done that are more outbound in nature, like the Hewlett fellowships, where we're basically providing support for faculty to incorporate an international dimension into their courses, ... [and Penn-in-Botswana].

Other things . fall under the area of community engagement.

DP: Is there anything you would have liked to work on but didn't get a chance to?

RD: We've made some significant headway with the online course evaluation and that project will be fully implemented this year . and the online syllabus - we're committed to get it done, but there's still a lot of active collaboration.

DP: What will you miss the most?

RD: The magic of Penn - the culture of optimism and collaboration and generosity of spirit, and I hope to find that at Hopkins.

DP: What do you think is the biggest difference between Penn and Hopkins students?

RD: Devotion to lacrosse ... The Lacrosse Hall of Fame is on the Hopkins campus.

DP: What's your "First 100 Days" agenda for Hopkins?

RD: Before you come in with an agenda, I think it's important that you understand the institution that you're going to be leading. But there's obvious priority around undergraduate education.

DP: What's the oddest thing you've encountered at Penn?

RD: There was the receptionist that we had in the first couple of months I was here that used to answer the phone, "Office of the Provoloney."

One of the very significant duties that the provost . has to do is to determine on the morning when there has been a snowstorm the night before whether conditions are sufficiently severe that you would close down the institution and call a snow day. As a Canadian, I've been here for almost four years, and there have been no snow days. If things hold for just another two weeks, I'm going to be enormously proud.

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