President appoints Michael Quick as interim provost

President C.L. Max Nikias announced in an email to all students on Friday that Michael Quick, the current executive vice provost and professor of biological sciences, will take over as interim provost and senior vice president for academic affairs beginning Dec. 1.

Quick, the second-ranking administrator in the Office of the Provost, will serve as interim provost until a new provost is appointed.

“It’s a very nice honor, I appreciate that the president has the faith in me that we are going to continue to do the great work that we do here at USC,” Quick said.

Elizabeth Garrett, the current provost, will step down from her role next year to take on a new role as the president of Cornell University on July 1, 2015. Garrett will be on sabbatical from Dec. 1 to June 30 in order to prepare for her new role at Cornell. Garrett was appointed to the provost position in fall 2010 after having served as interim provost for several months.

She announced she would be leaving USC on Sept. 30.

“Although we will miss her, I am certain she will be an extraordinary president, and that she will build an enduring and consequential legacy in American higher education,” Nikias said in the email announcement.

Garrett brought Quick into an administrative role four years ago when he was appointed as executive vice provost under her leadership.

Quick said he would continue the work Garrett and Nikias have initiated.

“We want to make sure we continue all the things that the president and the current provost, Beth Garrett, have been putting into the place over the last number of years,” he said. “So I look forward to continuing to work on promoting our great faculty and hiring new faculty.”

Among these plans are changes to USC’s general education system, which is undergoing a restructuring to make the classes more applicable to students. Quick said he would continue to work on initiatives that he has worked on as executive vice provost.

“I’ve been overseeing a lot of the revisions to the general education curriculum, so very excited about those,” he said. “I have been working a lot with various deans on new programs, new online programs that we have at the graduate school level, [and] new programs at the undergraduate level.”

He cited the World Bachelor in Business program and the interdisciplinary Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation as examples of such initiatives.

Quick said he would be in the position until a new provost was appointed, but did not know when a permanent provost would be named.

“All I can say is that I know they’re going to look across the globe,” he said of the search for a new provost.