New Provost Embraces Change
Category: Noteworthy
photography: Sarah Davis
Being a change agent means “pushing for greater innovations while simultaneously increasing enrollments, enhancing student retention, lowering costs and improving quality” to Darlene Brannigan Smith, B.S. ’78, MBA ’80, UB’s new provost and executive vice president, and it’s a role she says she wholeheartedly embraces. “It sounds like a tall order until you recognize the brainpower needed to confront these issues already exists among UB’s talented faculty and staff, its foundation board members and its community partners,” she says.
Having taken the helm as UB’s chief academic officer in late January after a national search, Smith says she will work closely with UB President Kurt L. Schmoke and with other members of the UB community to facilitate improvements and advances in budgeting, strategic planning and student learning outcomes. Smith brings with her decades of institutional knowledge, first from her experiences as a student and then as a faculty member and dean, all in the Merrick School of Business. She also has held faculty and administrative positions at The George Washington University and at Loyola University Maryland and visiting professor positions at universities in Beijing; Paris; and Santiago, Chile.
“I know the value of a University of Baltimore education and how it can transform lives,” she says. “I have countless student and alumni stories that I could share—stories that mirror my own UB educational journey.”
Smith is working to tell these success stories as she leads UB’s Middle States Commission on Higher Education reaccreditation process through next year. “I have the privilege of building on the institution’s reputation with the goal of taking it to a new level of academic excellence,” she says.
