Administrative Experience

I started as the Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University in October 2022. In my current position, I provide strategic and operational leadership in overseeing the university's faculty, thereby building and strengthening the academic mission and infrastructure for VCU. Key components of the responsibilities also include oversight of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence and developing other initiatives aimed at faculty success, retention and development. Additional areas include awards and recognition, mentoring initiative, promotion and tenure, faculty engagement, including initiatives for professional development of faculty and department chairs, workshops for promotion committees, teaching and learning including supporting faculty for expansion of VCU online, faculty policies and procedures, adjunct faculty.

I was previously at Purdue University, where I started as an assistant professor at Purdue and moved up the ranks to become a full professor in 2017. The same year (2017) I was appointed as the Butler Chair and Director of the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence (Butler Center). Started in 2004, the main mission of the Butler Center is to enable the excellence and success of faculty, particularly women, through professional development programs, initiatives, research, and workshop to enhance leadership skills and abilities of women.

While at the Butler Center in 2017, I continued existing programs and expanded them, created new initiatives, and developed a research arm. Salient among the initiatives is the Purdue-SBBCLE and Subramaniam Coaching and Resource Network (CRN) for assistant and associate professors. Bring pro-active in the current context of the pandemic, I created the Support Circle with Faculty Allies to promote a culture of care on campus. The monthly drop-in sessions involve discussion of key topics such as tips and resources for the new academic year (as faculty return after a challenging year), leaders in their own words about supporting faculty, and wellness. A series of workshops and panel sessions have been organized on wide-ranging topics for faculty and staff. See details here.

Continuing to build my leadership skills, I attended the 2019 Harvard’s Women in Education Leadership program. I am a 2019-20 HERS Leadership Institute program alumna and completed a capstone project on faculty retention and inclusive excellence.

In my about four years in the current position, I have focused on the Center’s major mission of fostering the success of faculty, particularly women and underrepresented minorities. I have built alliances across units and engaged the entire campus, particularly faculty, in discussions about support, mentoring, gaining tenure and promotion, and being attentive to diversity, equity, inclusion. My other strengths include a strong understanding of university procedures and processes as related to faculty, familiarity with the university decision-making structure, and willingness to take the initiative and lead new challenges.

My administrative leadership experiences span the university, college, and department levels. In addition to engaging the 13 Colleges of Purdue’s main campus, I have also involved the Centers in Purdue’s Discovery Park and Purdue’s regional campuses. In all the administrative positions, I have held, I built strong relationships through trust and mutual respect with various stakeholders.

My strengths encompass the following main areas (see CV for details):

Academic administrative and service experience
Creating and offering professional development programs for faculty and staff
Commitment to inclusive excellence
Assessment skills (data driven assessment of initiatives and programs)

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Professional development offerings from the Center include two key national conferences. The conference for assistant professors’ targets faculty, post docs, and graduate students. The second conference is the conference for associate professors, which I started in spring 2019, to mainly address barriers that women and women of color face in moving up the ranks (nationally about 32% of women are full professors). The conference was referenced as a resource in an Inside Higher Ed article in May 2020. Attendance at these conferences have grown steeply over the past three years and have served as spaces for faculty to network and learn. Panel sessions have focused of tenure/promotion processes, collaborating, and balancing research and teaching. Such sessions also serve as forums for disseminating and sharing information related to faculty careers and available resources.

At the Butler Center, I developed a research arm in three main ways:

In order to document and promote research related to academia, I created the peer-reviewed Working Paper Series: Navigating Careers in the Academy: Gender, Race, and Class in spring 2018. The most recent issues focus on higher education and COVID-19 and was the topic of discussion at the March Support Circle drop-in. Since the spring of 2020, the series is open to submissions nationally and globally. An editorial board of faculty members guides the series.

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In 2020, I identified a need for resources such as foundational documents that inform university policy. An example is the Best Practices Tools. List of Tools is below.

BEST PRACTICES TOOL #1: Documenting the Impact of COVID-19 on Faculty (tenure track/tenured). Tool #1 is here.

Mangala Subramaniam

The COVID-19 pandemic along with the protests for racial justice has affected people’s daily lives in profound ways. These effects will continue to have long term impacts within academia. It is therefore essential to maintain a record, that is document the impacts faculty are experiencing in the three main areas of Discovery, Teaching & Learning, and Engagement. This document is intended as a guide for all tenure track/tenured faculty. It is not policy.

The Tool about documenting impact of COVID-19 on faculty is the basis for, and referenced in, Purdue’s revised guidelines for annual assessment reviews/promotion considering the disruptions due to the pandemic. The Tool has been repeatedly cited as a resource in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Feb 25, 2020; January 2021; February 25, 2021) and was also shared with Provosts of the Big Ten and other universities. The most recent Tool provides best practices about how to engage in discussions of race.

BEST PRACTICES TOOL #2: Impact of COVID-19 on Faculty: What can Purdue Do? Tool #2 is here.

Mangala Subramaniam

Tool #2 provides some best practices in three main areas - faculty support, annual review, and recognition. The Tool is about what Purdue can do in the three areas of support, assessment, and recognition.

BEST PRACTICES TOOL #3: Documenting the Impact of COVID-19 on Faculty (clinical). Tool #3 is here.

Mangala Subramaniam

Following the Best Practices Tool #1 intended for tenure track/tenured faculty, Tool #3 focuses on clinical faculty. The best practices are an indicative list, and not an exhaustive list.

BEST PRACTICES TOOL #4A: How to Engage in Discussions of Differences Such as Race. Tool #4A is here.
Mangala Subramaniam, Megha Anwer, Jennifer Freeman Marshall, Shalini Low-Nam, & Laura Zanotti
As the protests against racism gained ground in the summer of 2020, there has been a growing interest in engaging in discussions about race. This toolIn this Tool, we rely on scholarship as well as our experiences to suggest best practices for faculty, administrators, staff, and students to engage in discussions about ‘differences.’ It is intended to serve as a guide for both the dominant and marginalized populations. The best practices we outline are by no means exhaustive, but they are relevant to what many of us strive for as a campus community. See Tool for recommended citation.

BEST PRACTICES TOOL #4B: How to Engage in Discussions of Differences Such as Race. Tool #4B is here

Mangala Subramaniam, Megha Anwer, Jennifer Freeman Marshall, Shalini Low-Nam, & Laura Zanotti

In this Tool, we outline best practices for discussing ‘differences’ in the method of practice and teaching (pedagogy) and includes attention to the instructor’s demographics. This Tool is a sequel to Tool #4A. We rely on scholarship and our own experiences to suggest best practices that can be useful for all instructors. The Tool is organized in four sections: discussing difference in teaching/learning contexts, syllabus and protocols, conversations within the classroom and during office hours, and course assessment and feedback conversations. See Tool for recommended citation

BEST PRACTICES TOOL #5: Examples for Documenting the Impact of COVID-19 on Faculty. Tool #5 is here.

Donna Riley and Mangala Subramaniam

During the past 15 months or so, there has been much discussion of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests for racial justice on people across the world. These effects will continue to have long term impacts within academia. Recognizing this, a best practices tool about documenting impacts of COVID-19 was created for faculty in fall 2020 (see Tools #1, 2, and 3 below). Since then, we have continued to hear questions about whether to, and how to, document impact. Therefore, we put together this Tool with examples of wording for documenting impact of COVID on faculty members research, teaching, and engagement, including cross-cutting themes. It can be useful for putting together annual review documents, P&T documents, and perhaps, promotion related committees as well. See Tool for recommended citation.

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Research Project

I am engaged in higher education related research projects. I am now conducting a study to assess the impact of the Coaching and Resource Network (CRN). I am also the lead PI in an ongoing study about faculty experiences with faculty search processes and the impact of our hiring workshops intended to diversify faculty.

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I have given several invited talks (see CV for list). Prominent among them is:

Keynote (virtual and live) at 2nd Annual Conference of GEARING-Roles, GENDER AND LEADERSHIP in Higher Education, November 9, 2020.

Title of Keynote: Doing the Work of Leadership to Transform Institutions

See https://gearingroles.eu/save-the-date-gearing-roles-second-annual-conference/

Presentation is here. Recording of keynote is here.

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Major university level committees I served on are:

University Faculty Compensation and Benefits Committee, Purdue University
University Promotions Committee – Panel A (tenure track/tenured faculty), Purdue University
Provost's Faculty Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion (inaugural committee started in fall 2020), Purdue University.

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Writings and Features

Women in Leadership: Challenges and Recommendations Inside Higher Ed, July 17, 2020. Even in top positions, women face challenges within institutional structures, systems and mind-sets that require transformative change, argue M. Cristina Alcalde and Mangala Subramaniam.

See SBBCLE mentioned as a resource in From Associate to Full Professor in Inside Higher Ed, 5/22/20. Keisha N. Blain shares some tips, strategies and resources to help midcareer scholars overcome barriers to promotion.

Underpinnings of Gender and Colorism in the Culture of Niceness in Universities. See here.

Presented at (1) Academic Deans Council, Purdue University, February 27, 2019, (2) ADVANCE Steering Committee, Purdue University, April 2019, (3) Dean, Polytechnic’s leadership team, Purdue University, April 2019.

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College of Liberal Arts Dean’s Faculty Fellow 2017-18 (inaugural fellow)

Project: Institutional Mechanisms for Breaking the ‘Glass Ceiling’: Gender, Race, and Mid-Career Faculty

Main goal of exploratory project was to develop best practices for recognition of the excellence of associate professors in the College of Liberal Arts (CLA). Intended to facilitate retention of both women and racial minority faculty to ensure they move up the career ladder - by becoming full professors - and take up leadership positions.

Key Accomplishments

To make information about promotion criteria and processes available to faculty, the meeting organized for assistants and associate (as two separate groups) will continue annually. Report was presented at CLA Senate Spring 2018 meeting. See report.
In addition, an exploratory study about climate was initiated by administering a structured survey in CLA. Reliable and valid measures for climate were developed. Details here.

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For additional information and details of administrative experience see my CV.