Gwyneth “Gwen” Price named new provost at University of Akron
On Monday, the University of Akron announced that Gwyneth “Gwen” Price has been named the new senior vice president and provost, effective April 21.
“UA is an institution that truly embodies its mission to transform students’ lives and make a significant impact on the community it serves,” Price said in a press release. “This will always be front of mind as I endeavor to facilitate the work of a tremendous faculty, find new opportunities for growth, support innovative programming and strive to be but a small part of UA’s future success.”
Price will remain as the interim dean of the Graduate School until a replacement is named.
Price arrived at the university in December 2022 as the senior vice provost for academic and faculty affairs in the Office of Academic Affairs. In the role, she served as a liaison between the department and faculty, from providing oversight for strategic initiatives — including accreditation and academic policies — to hiring, developing and supporting faculty.
Previous coverage: Meet the 3 internal candidates for provost
As the university’s chief academic officer — reporting directly to President R.J. Nemer — the successful finalist will help direct the university’s academic mission while managing budgets, hiring faculty, ensuring curriculum and research standards are met and helping recruit and retain students. The candidates include:
–Gwyneth Price, the current senior vice provost.
–Ali Dhinojwala, a polymer sciences professor and former chair of the department.
–Michael Gentithes, the associate dean of the School of Law.
(Provost John Wiencek is stepping down from the position and taking a faculty improvement leave before returning to the classroom to teach.)
Last week, the three candidates gave presentations about their vision for the University of Akron. So, what are their visions? And how will these plans stabilize and help lead the university into the future? All three recognized the issues facing higher education, as well as the University of Akron, including the university’s need to increase student enrollment while navigating rising costs and substantial debt obligations.
Read on to hear from the candidates in their own words.
Gwyneth Price: Focus on UA’s overall health versus individual departments and schools
Price highlighted three major challenges facing higher education: a steep demographic cliff for domestic students in Ohio, the rising costs of a college education for prospective students and the costs of offering a quality education.
With domestic enrollment expected to fall (current enrollment is 13,923 students), especially as competition for students rises, Price said a solution could be increased international enrollment. This echoes sentiments shared publicly by current university leadership.
“That takes us to the challenges of trying to find different populations, perhaps international, and all the complexities of recruiting an international population to come here,” Price said. “And then how we serve those students once they get here is a whole other conversation. It could be about our online population that we are endeavoring to serve more and more.”
She recognized the financial constraints facing the University of Akron, which she said are not unique. The university carries a deficit of roughly $27 million, which it’s working to lessen through retrenchment, which could include the loss of faculty positions.
“You have all of that you put on top of that, the fact that we, along with a multitude of other universities, are in a financial situation that have us teetering on the top of a very unstable Jenga game,” Price said. “And we’re just kind of waiting for whoever it is to come along and knock that last piece out from underneath us.”
If selected for the role, Price said, she would work “damn hard every damn day” to do what’s best for the university. For her, that means focusing on the overall health of the University of Akron rather than on individual departments and schools.
“It’s about the university,” Price said. “We have to have that perspective in order for the sustainability of the university.”
Ali Dhinojwala: Lean into international recruitment support from graduates
Dhinojwala, a 28-year veteran of the University of Akron, highlighted the $27 million deficit the university carries as a significant obstacle to long-term stability. He also said the deficit can’t stand in the way of strategic investments.
“The idea and basis for our decision making has to be finances,” Dhinojwala said. “And if you’re going to do strategic investment, we cannot avoid it.”
Dhinojwala outlined the factors that led to the hefty deficit the university carries, namely rising operational and payroll costs. He laid out a path to sustainability through modest increases in enrollment and decreases in payroll.
“We could increase to 16,000 — we’re going to target for it,” Dhinojwala said. “But if we even reach 15,000 and do the things that we are doing, the right things of scholarship and retention, we should have really a good safety margin in [2027] to not be in deficit and have the opportunity to actually grow in the future.”
Like Price, Dhinojwala said international recruitment is a key to future university success — he hopes to leverage international alumni to help. Dhinojwala also highlighted the need for private sector collaborations and investments.
“If you have an international student applying from a certain country, and if there is alumni from that organization actively engaged with that student in making sure that they decide to come to University of Akron, that’s going to be a lot more effective,” he said.
Dhinojwala noted the substantial investment companies have made in the polymer cluster and said branded corporate scholarships could be a way to attract and retain new students. Of course, new student recruitment isn’t without competition, which Dhinojwala said is an opportunity for the university to set itself apart.
“We are competing with, let’s say, Cleveland State, Case [Western Reserve University], Ohio State,” Dhinojwala said. “These are big programs, some of them, and we have to be distinctively different, otherwise we just don’t have no way to attract them here on campus.”
Michael Gentithes: Get ready to think outside the box
Gentithes has the shortest leadership tenure at the university — he joined the faculty in 2019 and last February became the associate dean of the School of Law. Like the other candidates, he recognized the big-picture issues facing higher education, adding that it’s the job of the provost to solve controllable problems.
“If we don’t think a little bit outside of the box and start to attract non-traditional students, international students,” Gentithes said, “I think of the costs of upkeep and maintenance and capital planning for this university, which are only going to rise, and have already risen, to a place that makes some of those strategic decisions a little bit more difficult.”
He said that while demographic shifts, rising costs and a shifting federal funding landscape are largely out of the control of a single provost, he said those challenges offer an opportunity for the university to define and bolster its value proposition to students.
“There are ways we can chart our own future, and that’s by focusing on some of the challenges that have a little bit more strings we can pull to manage in the future, and that focuses primarily on our value proposition,” he said. “There’s nothing in those background conditions that prevents us from creating the best possible learning environment for the most students available.”
Gentithes said the individual successes of colleges and schools at the university can be leveraged to attract students and chart a path towards a smaller deficit and increased financial stability.
Gentithes also made a commitment to transparency with his university colleagues. He said clear and unambiguous communication about issues the university faces and the different paths towards solving those is key to achieving solid footing.
“Hopefully we can build some trust, because I think that’s really lacking at the university level, between leadership and the rest of our institution,” Gentithes said. “We can build a belief in each other’s good faith efforts to move the institution forward.
“… Everyone at this institution wants to see it succeed. Whether we agree or not, we all have that same kind of altruistic sense of trying to shepherd this, this place that we love, to a place of stability and growth.”
