Rice University Names New Provost

Rice University Names New Provost

Rice News

Eugene H. Levy, a University of Arizona physicist who finds excitement in research, teaching and “the ability to make things happen” will be Rice University’s next provost, President Malcolm Gillis announced.

Levy, 55, dean of the College of Science at the University of Arizona since 1993, was selected by Gillis and approved by the board of trustees after a nine-month national search led by Gale Stokes, the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of History, and a 14-person committee. On July 1, he will take the handoff from Interim Provost David Minter as the successor to David Auston, who served as Rice provost from 1994 until becoming president of Case Western Reserve University last July.

“I am immensely pleased both with the work of the search committee and the final outcome,” Gillis said. “Gene Levy is ideally suited for Rice as we enter another century. He has been a very effective proponent of both undergraduate and graduate education at Arizona and has had outstanding results.”

Levy—who normally goes by Gene and whose last name is pronounced Lee-Vee—is equally pleased.

“I’m extremely excited about Rice and its opportunities,” he said. “Rice is a gemstone of a university. It has a wonderful student body, a wonderful faculty, a terrific reputation.

“I was enormously impressed by everyone I met—faculty, administrators, Malcolm, trustees. I am pumped about the opportunity to work with these individuals to achieve what they and I believe is the best for the future of Rice and its value to surrounding society.

“Rice is at a time in its development that’s truly exciting,” he said. “Decisions have been made to expand its vision and sense of self-confidence in research and graduate education—and to do so in a way that not only preserves but enhances the quality of undergraduate education. They go hand in hand.

“In fact, I would go further to say that to continue to be what Rice has been in the past to undergraduates, we must expand our vision in research and graduate education. The world is changing, and, increasingly, exposure to outstanding research and graduate students is what the best undergraduates want and need.”

A distinguished research and teaching career informs Levy’s views. His specialty—“I tend to refer to it as cosmic physics”—encompasses a number of areas of theoretical cosmic physics, planetary geophysics, solar and space physics, magnetohydrodynamics and electrodynamics.

“Among the subjects I have found most stimulating for my own research are the origins and behavior of magnetic fields—including Earth’s magnetic field and its reversal—the motion of cosmic rays in the solar system and the physical processes in star formation,” he said.

He has served as a member or chair of more than 50 primarily national and international advisory committees influencing space and science policy. In the 1980s, he played a key role in helping to direct NASA’s focus toward discovery of other planetary systems. In addition, he led a team—involving collaborators from NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the universities of Pittsburgh and California–San Diego—that designed a technique for the discovery of planetary systems.

His work won, in 1983, the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest award a federal agency can give to a civilian.

In addition, his curriculum vitae includes more than 70 journal articles,11 published advisory reports and more than 60 invited lectures, reviews and forums.

“I anticipate that my ability to continue research will be diminished but I don’t expect it to stop entirely,” Levy said. “I’m a theoretician, so I don’t require a big lab and can work with a few colleagues or students or even on my own. And I intend to continue teaching at some point, as well, though not right away. I have a lot to learn about Rice.”

Levy teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses at Arizona, including general education courses aimed at nonscience students.

“I enjoy the diverse challenges of teaching at different levels,” he said.

His excellence in teaching and service also have won recognition. He is most proud of being the inaugural recipient, in 1999, of the Hispanic Arizona Alumni Association Award “for contributions to Hispanic student education.” He also received, in 1996, a Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Leadership Award from the University of Arizona King Center “for support of civil rights and social change.”

Though a lifelong scientist, Levy said he in no way holds science above the humanities, social sciences or other fields.

“Universities should aim—in education and research—to explore the nature and substance of human experience,” he said. “An important part of human experience, for example, is encompassed by science, which yields deep insights into the physical and biological conditions of our existence and which underlies technologies that improve life. However, insights about social and organizational structures, about the nature of aesthetic and emotional experience, about business and commerce—I could go on with a long list—are equally important to understanding the human condition … and are crucial to establishing a high-functioning society.

“The best science, literature and economics, to take three examples, while they use different methodologies, all seek to uncover broad and deep generalities that underlie the human experience. It would be a big mistake to gerrymander important aspects of human experience out of the range of scholarship.”

Levy’s own education includes a 1966 A.B. with high honors from Rutgers University and a 1971 Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, both in physics. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Maryland and a research fellowship and assistant professorship at the Bartol Research Institute in Swarthmore, Pa., he joined the University of Arizona faculty in 1975.

There he was awarded tenure in 1978 and promoted to full professor in 1983. In 1983, he also became head of the Planetary Science Department and director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. He became dean of the College of Science in 1993.
None of that, Levy said, was part of a lifelong career plan, but rather was a natural progression for a person who likes to make things happen.

“I have rarely given too much thought to my next job,” he said. “I mostly focus on trying to accomplish what I want in the job I’m in.

“I was a department head for 10 years, 4 months and 21 days. That’s a relatively long time for person to be a department head. But to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish—and I did accomplish it—I was willing to commit to that time. I didn’t think at the time about doing something else.

“I didn’t consider the deanship, in a serious way, until my predecessor resigned and it became more or less inevitable,” he said. “And I entered the deanship thinking about what I would do as dean, not what I would do after that. Over the past year or two, I did start to think about moving up to a higher level of university leadership. And I think of it as leadership, not as administration.

“One of my weaknesses, if you will, is that I find satisfaction in a wide range of activities,” he said. “Academic leadership is one of those. I find research very exciting. I find teaching very exciting. I find the ability to take leadership and make things happen very exciting. I truly love the academic life.”

Levy’s style of speaking reflects how others describe him: equally passionate and tough-minded, collegial and willing to take charge, humorous and straightforward. Words such as “initiative” and “accomplishment” pepper his discussion of the work ahead. Take for example, the issue of Rice’s size relative to its competitors:

“I would be uncandid if I didn’t say I realize that the size of Rice is challenging to some of its aspirations,” he said. “I think it is not an insuperable challenge. What the size of Rice implies is that especially serious strategic thinking and targeting has to underlie initiatives. This is true of all institutions, but with Rice’s small size, there is less flexibility than at, say, a much larger university. By comparison, the faculty at the University of Arizona numbers about 1,600, so it has the opportunity to engage in a much wider range of activities.

“That in no way implies a qualitative distinction. However, it does imply that at Rice we must especially carefully target how resources will be used, what priorities will be set, what initiatives will be taken and what will be nurtured … and we must make each of those decisions with as much wisdom, insight and foresight as we can muster. Whatever our limitations, we must manage within them in ways that help us to be our most effective. That’s part of what’s exciting about the job.”

Asked how others would describe him in that decision-making process, Levy thought a moment and replied, “Very open and very collegial.”

“One of most important roles I can play is in facilitating, enabling and allowing creative initiative on the part of others,” he said. “A university lives or dies on the basis of its creative initiative. We have to hire every faculty member and many staff members on the basis of their creative capacities and initiative. One of our objectives has to be to capitalize on those capacities and afford our people the opportunity and the satisfaction of making things happen that are important for the university.”

The members of the provostial search committee were: Stokes; Andrew Barron, professor of chemistry and materials science; Bonnie Bartel, assistant professor of biochemistry and cell biology; Arnaud Chevallier, graduate student; Charles Henry, vice provost and librarian; David Ikenberry, associate professor of management; Ken Kennedy, the Ann and John Doerr Professor in Computational Engineering; Randi Martin, professor of psychology; Andrew Meade, associate professor of mechanical engineering; Honey Meconi, associate professor of musicology and music history; Constantine Nicandros, Rice board of trustees; Elizabeth Parson, undergraduate student; Meredith Skura, the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of English; and Richard Tapia, the Noah Harding Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics.