Provost Marilyn Sheerer has been with UNCW since February of 2016. In addition to her position as the Provost, Sheerer is also the Vice Chancellor of UNCW, serving beside Chancellor Jose Sartarelli. She is the highest ranking woman on campus and is working toward better representation for more women on our campus.
HC: You’re in a great leadership position. What is your advice to women who aspire to make it to a similar place?
PS: I actually get asked this a lot, which may not surprise you. One of the things I say is to be willing to lead wherever you are. Find ways to get engaged as soon as you can. Do something to allow you to demonstrate that you can lead. The other thing I say is to do a superb job where you are, and people will notice. Sometimes, you have to be your own spokesperson, you can’t always just wait. The other part is to take advantage of the opportunities that are offered to you. If you go in with the right attitude, it will work. Just be willing to step up to opportunity.
HC: What do you wish someone had told you about the “real world” while you were in college? If you could talk to 20-year-old you or 30-year-old you, what would you say?
PS: I’m very people-oriented. I interact with people and get to know them well. So, it was hard for me in the beginning of my career to have meetings with colleagues that weren’t going to be pleasant. I would take a little sheet of paper, put it on my desk, and kind of hold myself to the bullet points of things I needed to talk about in a one-on-one meeting. If it’s a difficult situation, I’ll let the person know at the beginning of the meeting that it’s going to be. No one ever mentored me around that; I learned it on my own. I have a group of women chairs that come in here now and meet with me and department chairs. I shared that advice with them the other day. I told them to really reflect on that and to think about how they’re going to start the conversation so that it will be easy to say the things that they called the meeting about.
HC: Your position keeps you in close contact with the faculty and students on campus. How do you balance being people-oriented and being in a leadership position?
PS: Difference is appreciated. Some people are creative while some see little details. I’m a big-picture person, so I need people who are detail-oriented. I really like getting to know people, and talking. If you weren’t interviewing me right now, I’d be interviewing you! Who are you, where’d you come from, how many children are in your family? I’m energized by conversation, and I tend towards extroversion. If part of your leadership style is that you value interaction, then you had better have the energy for those conversations. I’m really sincere about wanting to know you. I’m not doing it because you’re a student here and I need to chalk up points or something. I genuinely want to know.
HC: Are you working with anything particularly close to your heart right now? Anything on campus that really gets you fired up?
PS: There are so many things that this job entails, but it might be the development of the department chairs. I’m part of department chair training, so I’ve pulled these women who are department chairs into a separate meeting here, and I check in with them. I’ve never felt held back because I’m a woman, but it’s definitely true that women have to be more careful as we lead. If we’re too assertive, we can be accused of being aggressive or b*tchy, you know. That’s one of the projects right now that I feel good about. I think we can really help people be better leaders as department chairs.
HC: How do you think we’re doing representing women on campus?
PS: I think all of the things we’re doing are good. One of the things that kicks back sometimes is: “Why are we just focusing on women?” The other thing is professors go from associate professor, to professor, to full professor. To get to be a full professor, you have to publish a lot, and if you look at the data on campus right now, more men are full professors than women. So, what’s that about? It’s a variety of things. Maybe women don’t get enough support in their departments. Women often choose to take time out, maybe to have children, and when that happens you do have to try to break back in afterwards. Usually a department chair comes from a full professor. I’d like to see more associate professors–women–becoming full professors.
If you’d like to hear more from Provost Sheerer, follow the Provost’s Office on Twitter @UNCWProvost.
Photos courtesy of Jeff Janowski and the OUR Office.
A special thanks to Sharon Lindgren and Paula Cameron for quick email correspondence throughout the interview process. You guys rock.