From Antarctica to Arkansas, New Chief Academic Officer Brings World of Experience
Image by Tory Germann
09/06/2016
By Ed Brennen
Mike Vayda knew UMass Lowell was in the midst of a remarkable transformation when he applied to become provost. After all, the “miracle” of the last eight years, as he puts it, was one of the things that attracted him to the opportunity.
But one small part of that transformation — physically moving the Office of the Provost from Cumnock Hall to University Crossing this summer — meant that Vayda had to spend his first few weeks on the job temporarily sharing an office suite with his new boss, Chancellor Jacquie Moloney.
That was just fine with the university’s new chief academic officer, who saw the arrangement as an “added benefit.”
“It’s been a joy early in my transition to engage with so many people and understand the energy, the culture and the can-do attitude of the university,” says Vayda, who officially began his role as provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs in June after spending the past six years as dean of the University of Arkansas Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences.
Vayda was born and raised in northern New Jersey (“in the shadows of the George Washington Bridge”), but he considers his move to UMass Lowell a homecoming of sorts. He’s spent most of his academic career in New England — as an undergrad at the University of New Hampshire, a professor at the University of Maine and associate dean at the University of Vermont. And New England is where he and his wife, Jeanne Marie, raised their family.
“UMass Lowell just felt like home,” he says. “It was the perfect fit.”
Moloney, who introduced Vayda to faculty and staff at a meet-and-greet event at University Crossing in June, couldn’t agree more.
“Getting to know Mike the past few months, I can see that he is the perfect fit for UMass Lowell,” Moloney said. “He’s a consensus-builder, he’s incredibly enthusiastic and dynamic and he is eager to make a difference at this university. His goals for us are quite aspirational, quite ambitious and we’re so thrilled he’s here.”
Image by Tory Germann
After landing the provost job in February, Vayda says Moloney gave him a simple charge: Make UMass Lowell even better. So he spent the next several months reaching out to deans and faculty members, gaining insight into how the university can build on its strengths. In July, he announced an organizational restructuring of academic affairs and identified three areas of emphasis: enhancing student success, empowering faculty success, and partnerships and innovation.
“I believe organizations need to continually evolve to be competitive and successful, but change for change’s sake has no purpose,” says Vayda, who knows he has big shoes to fill in replacing beloved former Provost Don Pierson. “My challenge is to embrace the things that are very successful and have momentum and to encourage them to continue on that positive path. At the same time, we need to be looking at the horizon of where we want to go so we’re always at the forefront.”
Scientific Mind
Vayda double-majored in biochemistry and zoology at UNH, where he also met his “sweetheart” Jeanne Marie. They married in 1982 while he was working on his Ph.D. in molecular biology at Princeton and she was a nurse at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. In 1984 they moved to the West Coast so Vayda could take a two-year post-doctoral fellowship working on plant molecular genetics at the University of California Berkeley. He would later do two brief stints as a visiting scientist in Antarctica at the National Science Foundation’s Palmer Station, working with his esteemed late colleague, Bruce Sidell (to whom Vayda is “still grateful for that collaborative opportunity”).
“I was always drawn to the sciences,” says Vayda, whose interest may have been written in the stars: He was born in 1957, during the International Geophysical Year, the global scientific project that encouraged the development of math, science and engineering capacity in the U.S. to address a perceived “technology gap” after the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik.
“That led to the huge technological revolution that we enjoy today and really set the U.S. apart from the rest of the world,” says Vayda, who became caught up in that revolution as a young boy growing up in Bergen County, N.J. “Those were heady days — John F. Kennedy, the space race and the moon. That really caught my imagination.”
Like many UMass Lowell students, Vayda was a first-generation college student. His father, Joe, was the son of immigrants from Austria-Hungary and worked as a postman in New York City, also serving in the European Theatre during World War II. Vayda’s mother, Mary, was an immigrant from the former Czechoslovakia and worked as a “Rosie the Riveter” during the war.
“They met after World War II, being introduced by relatives in the ethnic Slovak community. They settled down into the suburban American dream, but it was a pretty blue-collar background,” Vayda says. “So I know the challenges of tuition and financial aid, and I understand the value higher education provides in creating economic and social opportunity.”
He and Jeanne Marie have three grown children — Robert, Anne Marie and Peter — who have each pursued careers in the engineering or health professions. Both Robert and Peter are civil engineers (Peter is currently a second lieutenant in the Air Force), while Anne earned her nursing degree and served as a combat medic embedded with Special Forces in Afghanistan.
Always Enterprising
After an 18-year teaching career at Maine, Vayda became associate dean and research director at UVM in 2004. In addition to working with faculty, Vayda worked with entrepreneurs and business people to promote faculty ideas.
“We had some very exciting opportunities working with stakeholder groups on value-added product development, intellectual property generation and licensing faculty ideas to the private sector,” says Vayda, who also worked with the Secretary of Agriculture office to promote economic development.
Image by Tory Germann
While at UVM Vayda also became involved with the Food Systems Leadership Institute, a nationwide program that studies new approaches to healthy eating and food product development. Through that association he learned about the opportunity to become Dean at Arkansas’ Bumpers College, which he took in 2010.
“I embraced that fully because if you are going to make a difference in healthy eating and the food system of this country, where better to do that than in a major production area of the U.S.?” says Vayda, who was able to engage with some of the world’s largest food producers like Tyson Foods and retailers such as Wal-Mart, both of which have corporate headquarters in northwest Arkansas, close to the university.
Getting Down to Work
Vayda sees several similarities between UMass Lowell and the University of Arkansas, which are ranked as the ninth and 10th fastest growing universities in the country, respectively, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. In addition to rapid enrollment growth and student appeal, both schools have seen increasing research and scholarship and rising rankings. “And most importantly, an increasing interaction with the private sector for providing an educated and prepared workforce for a knowledge-based economy,” says Vayda, who initiated a Dean’s Executive Advisory Board at Bumpers comprised of prospective employers to provide input on curriculum innovation and career trends.
“That was one of the best things we ever did at Arkansas because it helped us understand what employers value,” he says.
One of his key challenges here at UMass Lowell is to enhance the advising system to best prepare students for success, without overburdening faculty and adviser workloads.
“We’re looking at the implementation of software that facilitates faculty efforts and the efforts of professional advisers, and having them work together as a team to prepare students for success,” says Vayda, who also sees alumni engagement as an important area of focus. “This institution has an impressive group of loyal alumni donors, and I think that’s a reflection of the value of the education that people receive and the love that they have for this institution.”
It’s a love he’s also seen from the faculty, staff and students he’s spoken with while getting settled in on campus.
“The people are the gem of this institution. They’re the heart and soul,” Vayda says. “This is the dream job for me. It’s the perfect alignment of the things I’ve been aspiring to implement in higher education — meeting the needs of students and communities. It’s exactly where I want to be.”