Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Ravi Bellamkonda assumed his role at Emory University in July 2021, after a five year tenure as dean of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University (N.C.). In the years since, Bellamkonda has served the University in various crucial roles, hiring seven deans and launching the AI.Humanity and Student Flourishing initiatives. Before Bellamkonda leaves Emory at the end of this semester to join The Ohio State University, he spoke to The Emory Wheel for the final time to discuss the University’s future, the challenges the school faces and the difference he made during his time as provost.
The Q&A has been edited for clarity and length.
The Emory Wheel: Many people on campus know who you are and what your title is, but what goes into the day-to-day of being the provost at Emory?
Bellamkonda: It’s actually an amazing position because it’s the chief academic officer. What that means is that this is the function that oversees all academic matters, meaning all the schools, all the faculty, all the educational programs we have, the quality of those programs, faculty, hiring, promotions. So it is literally overseeing all of the academic mission: libraries, museum, research enterprise, Campus Life — all of that falls under the provost’s office.
TEW: We’ve had to hire more deans in recent years. I’d like to get your reasoning on why you think that is and what you think the new leaders have brought to Emory.
Bellamkonda: There’s not one reason why we’ve had that turnover. We’ve had several long-standing deans step down — James Curran in the Rollins School, Jan Love in the Candler School, our graduate dean Lisa Tedesco. So some of them were just serving here for many, many years and just want to step down. Two of them left to become presidents of their alma mater. … While we celebrate their successes and what they brought, we’ve tried to bring deans in who are best equipped to do the work ahead for those schools. So we’ve used that opportunity to ask, ‘Okay, what does this school need? What does the [Emory University School of Law] need in the dean transition, and how do we find the best dean for that?’ I’m happy to say that in every instance, we’ve landed our top-choice dean, which tells me many things. One, Emory is an attractive place for people to come. Two, the work we have ahead of us — there’s excitement. And so we’ve been able to attract amazing people to these roles from very good places.
TEW: How do you see AI evolving at Emory and in higher education in the next five to 10 years?
Bellamkonda: There's a lot of hype on AI, and I'm an academic and a scientist. Whenever there's hype, I get suspicious. I'm like, ‘What is the thing really here?’ Actually, I do believe that it is a transformative technology. I don't know if you know about the Turing test … if something's behind the screen, are you able to tell if it's a human or not? And for the first time, not that long ago, it failed for the first time in our human history. So something significant is happening in AI. … I'm a biomedical engineer by training. I was a dean of engineering before, and in general, computing and data science and all of these things are playing a profound role, not just in technology, not just in smartphones, [but] in our politics, in our marketing, in how we make friends, in all facets of life. Manufacturing is being impacted by data, AI and technology working together in some synergy, [and so is] health. So the goal was, well, we don't have an engineering school, we don't have a computing school, but what we do have is amazing faculty and programs that work on things that are important in the world, from social justice to law to medicine to literature. And so what we decided to do was, well, ‘in the service of’ is a good model, and let's put AI as a tool in the service of the things that we care about. That was the philosophy behind AI.Humanity. The whole idea was, we don't want to be a Georgia Tech or an MIT or a Carnegie Mellon making new algorithms. What we want to do is that for AI to be really impactful, it has to be in the service of something that the world cares about. And we are very good at that.
TEW: At the last University Senate meeting, you mentioned Emory fighting with an arm tied behind its back regarding college endowments. Can you elaborate on why Emory has a smaller endowment, how it fell behind and the work that's being done to close the gap?
Bellamkonda: Emory is not thought of as a poor school, generally, because people say it's a Coca-Cola university, you have a large endowment, all these things. But practically what happens is, if you're a dean, your sources of income are fourfold right? So you have your endowment and whatever it spins off. You have tuition income, like undergraduate or graduate tuition. If you have a research portfolio, you have some direct costs, and then you have philanthropy. The largest expenses that typically a school has — I'm sorry if I'm being an administrator here — but the largest expenses typically a school has is faculty salaries and student financial aid. And those are both important for us. The University is the quality of our faculty, and having access and being able to get the brightest minds to come here is a core value for us. So the challenge we have is, if you look across our enterprise, our schools do have smaller endowments than their peers that we're competing against. ECAS's endowment is about $650 million. Northwestern, Duke, Vanderbilt — all these places have larger endowments for the arts and sciences. Law school endowment is about $80 million. Duke law, all these places, again, have larger [endowments]. Same with Goizueta Business School compared to other business schools that we compete with. … I think President Fenves is very aware of that, and I'm very grateful that he's made a push to have more endowments for faculty, which will offset some salary costs, and also for scholarships. So that's what's happened. Just historically, we have not made it a priority, maybe, or we haven't cultivated the donors we need to cultivate to give back to Emory, for whatever reason, but we need to have larger endowments because that's what allows us, in the portfolio of resources, to invest in students or faculty.
TEW: Improving retention rates has been a recent central focus of Emory. What progress has been made, and what initiatives are Emory still looking at to further improve this number?
Bellamkonda: We’ve made a lot of progress. The president, in one of his first addresses, set a goal of 97% first-year retention, and we are now hovering between 95-point-something to 96-point-something. So we’re not that far off. Just to give you context, one percentage in these terms is like 16 students. So it’s not like hundreds of students are leaving, and we are very high — a lot of schools would like to be where we are. The reason we care about first-year retention is twofold. One is that I would like every student that comes to Emory to feel like this is the best place for them, and I take it personally when people leave …I would like us to have a commitment at Emory … [to have every student who walks in the door] to graduate from Emory. That should be our orientation, and [we should] do everything we can to make sure that that’s the case and deal with whatever the issues are. And under President Fenves and me, we’ve tried to make it central. On the other side, if we don’t have first-year retention, they also won’t graduate from here. So our graduation rate at four years is lower than many of our peers. Our six-year graduation rates are lower, and that matters. Not only do we want to keep them, we want them to graduate [and] graduate on time. There are cost implications, other implications. So we just haven’t built, in the past, the apparatus to sort of monitor what’s happening with this and then have interventions to make sure our students can graduate on time. And so now we have a lot of that, … We’ve got dashboards using data tracking every student, where we are putting in measures like midterm grades for first-year students being mandatory, so a student knows how they’re doing, so if they're falling behind academically, before it is too late, we can intervene. We’re putting a new software system to have better records of a student, so an advisor putting in notes can be seen by a faculty member who’s putting in notes can be seen by athletics that’s putting in notes, so the registrar can see it.
TEW: With the shift from the Gold to the Blue plan, another big focus has been changing general education requirements (GERs). What was the reasoning behind the switch, and what feedback have you and the University received?
Bellamkonda: I’m very proud of Emory making that switch. I came here from Duke that worked on a similar plan, and it failed. The faculty didn’t work for it. I really credit our faculty, especially in [Emory College], for coming up with it. I think the idea was to give more flexibility to our students and to recognize the importance of experiential learning in our education. And both of those are wonderful because in a place like Emory, like you said yourself, you’re majoring in something, minoring in something, maybe double majoring, and getting a certificate. To do that, you need to have flexibility. And that’s the central goal of the GERs, the philosophy. … The beauty of [experiential learning] is that the world is messy. It doesn’t neatly fall into formulas like at the back of a textbook. And the beauty of experiential learning is you get to reconcile the theoretical concepts you’re learning with the real world, and you get to experience that interface. And I’m a big believer in experiential learning, whether it’s deep research or travel abroad or working in the community or project-based learning — whatever it is, it’s a wonderful pedagogical tool to learn better whatever it is that we’re interested in learning.
TEW: Another change to GERs has extended the time Oxford College students need to complete their requirements, frustrating students who hoped to graduate a semester early. What was the reasoning behind this decision?
Bellamkonda: Oxford is a very special, tight-knit, small, intimate community. … And it’s different from Atlanta. It’s not better or worse, it’s just different. And people going to Oxford with the orientation that they’d get out of there as quickly as possible and come [to the Atlanta campus] was not the right spirit to fully benefit from the wonders of Oxford: close faculty interactions, faculty advising, just living in the community and being part of taking advantage of the farm and all of these things that Oxford has to offer. So the idea was to make it such that it’s possible that students do give Oxford the four semesters. We still know a lot of students come here after three, still, but [we wanted] to make it more likely that they experience the four semesters at Oxford because that’s what it has to offer. I also happen to know that students who started at Oxford do very very well when they come here. They do very very well after they graduate. Many of our trustees are Oxford people. Many very successful people in business are from Oxford that came to Emory and then graduated. So there is something special there. And we just wanted people to choose up front. Do you want that? Do you want this? But not try to use that as a transitory step to come here. … And we have some work to do. It’s not students’ fault. We have to clarify who should pick Oxford. Who is it for? And indeed, Dean [Badia] Ahad is now working on a clear statement with [Vice President of Communications and Marketing] Luke [Anderson] and his team about ‘When I’m trying to decide, what do I need to know so that I intentionally pick that experience? So I’m not thinking about it as ‘How can I get out of [Oxford] and come to Atlanta,’ not realizing what [Oxford] has to offer?’ That is a challenge. We have work to do, and indeed, Dean Ahad and Luke and others are doing that work, but that was the intention.
TEW: The Respect for Open Expression Policy has been under scrutiny lately, and the University Senate is working on a new proposal. What would an effective open expression policy look like to you?
Bellamkonda: I think for large measure, we actually have a fantastic open expression [policy]. When I speak to my colleagues, their envy is that we don’t just make a statement like the [University of] Chicago statement, this and that. We actually clearly spelled out ways to operationalize that, right? With our Open Expression Observer[s] Program. And increasingly, and in general, I think for large measure, there are very serious protections for open expression on our campus explicitly laid out. There were some areas which had ambiguity with it, and I’m glad that we will try to resolve those ambiguities. And the president issued — on the safety-related things — issued … a statement on that, but we will see where this lands. So I would say that we actually have a pretty good open expression policy. Like any policy, it can be improved. We have a process to improve it that’s inclusive and all parties are at the table, and I’m optimistic that we’ll strengthen it based on what they come up with.
TEW: The administration has also faced criticism regarding the open expression policy. How have you personally handled it?
Bellamkonda: It’s always painful when internally, we have issues that cause tensions amongst ourselves. It’s very important to me that we are one family and one community, and that’s how I think of us, but like any family, there are disagreements. But disagreements shouldn’t be read as that we don’t care about each other and things like this. So the way I think about this is that ultimately, it is good. A university is a place where different voices, by design, come in, and this is the place where we debate, [and] we think about what’s the right way to do things. That’s what we do. And we need to model to the world how to do that work. And that’s why I’m optimistic that there’s a collaborative process with the senate to look at those issues. … It pains me personally whenever we amongst ourselves have issues where it’s personal, or somebody doesn’t feel safe, and we will do everything we can for that not to be the case. For it to be a case where there are real issues in the world where we can have disagreements. Let’s figure out a way to productively make progress there. Nobody’s perfect.
So the way I think about it is, the world is the way it is. It is messy, it is complicated. There are difficult issues. There are issues where we disagree, and we have to find a way to make progress constructively. Do we always get it right? Maybe not, … but that’s the work. That’s the work, and we shouldn’t shy away from that work. … A great place is not necessarily [where] everything is harmonious. A great place is a place that learns and grows when it’s challenged, and we have had a challenge, and we will learn and grow. That is my hope.
TEW: Last question, what is the biggest problem or challenge Emory is facing, and what is the biggest opportunity Emory has?
Bellamkonda: I’ll give you an administrative answer. The challenge we have is that Emory has been on a very steep trajectory of becoming a really fantastic university. … We came into the [Association of American Universities], the top research universities, in the ’90s. Relative to Ohio State, [which] in 1916 was a part of the AAU, it’s relatively young in its research journey. James Laney, an amazing president, got us there with the Woodruff gift and all that. So what we have not spent as much time doing, just as a part of that growing pain, is build systems, data and IT and just housekeeping things that makes our operational things more efficient. So we just haven’t had time to do that. We are beginning that work. It began in my time, and the hospital is helping us do that. But that’s our biggest challenge. … The student system I alluded to, many places have already done it, and we’re just doing it. So we really need to work on our data, IT system, so that when you are planning your four-year plan to major and minor, you can map that out so you know which courses will be taught when, typically, and can you make that work? Can you not? Those kinds of things we just haven’t spent time doing, and we need to do that work. And in some ways, it holds us back a little bit, but we recognize this, and so that’s our challenge.
The opportunity really is that we have incredible assets in terms of being in Atlanta, being a really special university, being in demand, a great reputation in the world and in the nation. Do we step into that opportunity and say we will lead? We will lead the country, and we will lead in this space? And what does that look like? Do we have the confidence, in some ways, the swagger to say that? I hope the opportunity will be that Emory will truly take its place and lead and lend its voice that’s very important in higher ed, and do its own unique contribution to what leadership in higher ed looks like.
