In July 2001, shortly after settling into her new post as vice provost for Academic Personnel, Barbara Horwitz sent an e-mail to several recently tenured faculty members. She asked a simple question: What do you know now about academic success that you wish you had known when you were first starting out as a young professor?

“I was focused on the success of junior faculty,” Horwitz recalled in an interview this week. “I wanted them to know how the system worked and what our expectations were for advancement. I wanted to make it clear how they needed to go about building progress to be more successful.”

About six months later, Horwitz and her staff took the responses and launched the campus’s first-ever, Web-based list of frequently asked questions for new faculty. She followed that up with more new resources, including a brown bag series for department chairs, a brown bag series for new faculty, and later, a mandatory training session for department chairs, a handbook for department chairs and program directors, and a leadership program for chairs and tenured faculty.

In addition, in collaboration with Information and Educational Technology, she and her team worked on the development of the My InfoVault Academic Personnel database, one of the first such databases in the UC system, providing for more streamlined Academic Personnel processing. And Horwitz’s office continues to create other new technological tools for increased efficiency.

She came into office with a recently completed administrative unit review on her desk, and, with her team, successfully implemented many of the recommendations, starting with a clear mission for the unit, and also including enhanced staff leadership, a faculty relations program and devoted focus to the Partner Opportunities Program (a recruitment and retention tool for outstanding faculty, with POP being used most often to assist spouses and partners who are looking for employment).

‘Strong collegial commitment’

As Horwitz prepares to step down after a 10-year stint in her post, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph Hexter said in a letter released today (Feb. 11) to campus leaders that he would soon announce an internal search to fill the position. The search will begin this quarter, Hexter wrote, with the expectation that the new vice provost will by appointed in time to begin serving by the fall quarter.

Hexter made clear that filling the position and replacing Horwitz are two distinctly different things.

“It would be impossible to exaggerate my appreciation for Barbara's many years of service, and in particular her patience in explaining the fine points of Academic Personnel at UC Davis to a provost new to his office,” said Hexter, who took up his post on Jan. 1.

Hexter praised Horwitz for “her strong collegial commitment to providing academic personnel processes that are transparent, consistent, efficient and responsive to departmental needs.”

It is expected that Horwitz will return to her faculty position in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior.

As vice provost of Academic Personnel, Horwitz has led the office’s mission to provide leadership and oversight for the recruitment, appointment, advancement and retention of Academic Senate faculty and Academic Federation members. The office also provides management and informational workshops for deans, department chairs and other academic leaders, and it investigates alleged violations of the Faculty Code of Conduct, UC policies regarding equal employment opportunity and discrimination, and certain grievances filed under the Academic Personnel Manual.

'Distinguished professor'

Horwitz has become a near iconic figure on this campus since arriving in 1968 to serve as an assistant research physiologist, joining the faculty four years later.

Since then, she has been recognized for her celebrated teaching and mentoring, her productive research program (she is officially a “distinguished professor”), and for doing the work of the vice provost of Academic Personnel in a transparent and fair manner. Indeed, during her term as vice provost, then-Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef appointed Horwitz to serve as acting provost and executive vice chancellor — a job that she fulfilled for 18 months.

In 1982, she received a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Davis Division of the Academic Senate, and, in 1991, became the first woman to be awarded the UC Davis Prize for Teaching and Scholarly Achievement.

She received the UC Presidential Award for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate Research in 1995. One year later, the American Physiological Society named her the Arthur C. Guyton Physiology Teacher of the Year.

Principal investigator on 3 NIH grants

Today, she is the principal investigator on three grants from the National Institutes of Health. The projects range from how well the central nervous system of mammals functions at very low brain temperatures during hibernation (a study that could inform how we prevent and treat cardiovascular disease in people), to an effort to increase the number of underrepresented minority students who pursue doctoral degrees, or medical and doctoral degrees, and careers in biomedical research.

As vice provost of Academic Personnel, Horwitz is particularly proud of the role that she played in the UC Davis and Berkeley campuses receiving a $250,000 Alfred P. Sloan Award in 2006 to expand programs that support career flexibility for tenured and tenure-track faculty. Among other things, UC Davis used the award to help set up a program of peer-faculty work-life advisers.

Horwitz said she will miss most her colleagues in Academic Personnel, and on the Council of Deans and Vice Chancellors. “When I have a hard decision to make, we have a discussion about it,” she said. “I take a devil’s advocate approach, and if I am inclined to say, ‘No,’ (then) I want to hear arguments as to why that may be the wrong decision. I work with great people, and I will miss that interaction.”