DeKALB – Laurie Elish-Piper is the executive vice president and provost at NIU, she spoke to the Northern Star about her experience at the university. 

HOW DID YOU ORIGINALLY FIND YOURSELF IN THE ROLE OF THE INTERIM EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND PROVOST?

“I started at NIU in 1995 as a faculty member, and I served as a faculty member for a number of years, and then also had different administrative roles,” Elish-Piper said. “I was an interim department chair, a center director, a clinic director, and about eight years ago, I became the dean of the College of Education. When I was serving as the dean of the College of Education, I was asked to step in as the interim executive vice president and provost in July. I agreed to do that and then we did the search, and then I was selected for the permanent role.”

HOW IS BEING THE INTERIM EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND PROVOST?

“It’s been exciting,” Elish-Piper said. “It’s been wonderful to see issues at the university level, having worked in a department and as a dean of a college, you see things from that perspective. In this role, I’ve been able to see all of the things that happen at a university level. So it’s been exciting to see student success initiatives from a university perspective, to be able to look at innovative curriculum at a university level rather than within a specific college or department or program.”

“I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to get to know more people on campus who I ordinarily wouldn’t work with on a day-to-day basis,” Elish-Piper said. “I really have appreciated building strong connections with the Division of Student Affairs and the Division of Academic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion because a lot of the work that we do across those three divisions is focused on student experience, student success, just the whole student time at NIU.”  

WHAT DOES YOUR TYPICAL DAY LOOK LIKE?

“Every day is different, incredibly different,” Elish-Piper said. “A lot of meetings with folks in academic affairs, so that would include meeting with deans or meeting with department chairs or meeting with faculty groups, but also meetings with representatives from other divisions at the university. So meeting with HR and meeting with finance and administration and meeting with Student Affairs and Academic Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, meeting with Outreach, Engagement and Regional Development, meeting with folks from the Division of Research and Innovation, partnerships. So a lot of meetings.”

“One of the things that I don’t do as much as I would like is interacting with students,” Elish-Piper said. “We just formed a provost student advisory committee so that I can regularly get together with undergraduate students and learn about what’s going well, what’s not going well, what their experiences are, getting their input on particular aspects of the academic programs, and experiences and advising and all of those things.” 

“I get invited to a lot of things,” Ellish-Piper said. “Yesterday, for example, I had a chance to go to the Board of Trustees professor lecture for a previous Board of Trustee winner, Liam Teague, out of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, and I got a chance to see him. He’s the head of the steel pan band. I got a chance to see him perform and talk about his craft. But, I also got a chance to learn how to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on the steel pan. I get a number of really exciting, unique opportunities like that.”

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS FOR NIU AND HAVE THEY CHANGED SINCE YOU’VE BEEN PERMANENTLY MADE VICE PRESIDENT?

“I think my goals have been consistent,” Ellish-Piper said. “I’m really focused on broadly on student success, and that takes a lot of different forms. That’s everything from the quality of our academic programs to the advising, to the support services we provide. So that hasn’t changed.”

“The other piece that I’m really, really focused on is faculty success, so really ensuring that we’re hiring and mentoring and supporting and investing in our faculty, to be able to be great at teaching, great at their research and scholarship and to the service that they provide as well,” Elish-Piper said. “I think that those two broad cornerstones were the same. Another piece is what those goals look like now that I’ve been in the role. I think I have a more nuanced understanding of what we can do to address those broad goals. The commitment to those two broad goals remains the same, always looking at the decisions that we make through a lens of is this good for students and student success? Does this support faculty success? Because faculty plays such a vital role in the quality of our academic programs, the student experience, in the opportunities that students have both in and out of the classroom.”

WHAT CHALLENGES WOULD YOU SAY THE UNIVERSITY IS FACING RIGHT NOW?

“The university is facing a budget deficit. So we need to look at ways to mitigate that budget deficit,” Elish-Piper said. “The lens that I bring to that in collaboration with Chief Financial Officer George Middlemist is yes we need to be fiscally responsible, but we need to do it in an academically responsive way. So I’m always bringing that lens of what’s best from Academic Affairs because we want to ensure that core mission of the university is first and foremost in our decision making. I think that’s one big challenge.” 

“Another challenge, I think, is that  – it’s sometimes referred to as a demographic cliff – there’s fewer young people graduating from high schools, just in our demographics,” Elish-Piper said. “So I think the challenge is that we need to figure out ways to continue recruiting traditional age students, but also really ramping up our transfer friendliness to ensure that we can recruit and educate and graduate more transfer students, looking at ways that we can really serve adult learners who have some college credits but don’t have a degree, returning students who started at NIU and stopped out and getting them to come back. So I think that enrollment challenge, we have a lot of strategies we’re working on, but we need to work then strategically and intentionally because enrollment is going to continue to be a challenge not just for NIU, but really for higher education across Illinois and across the nation.” 

WHAT ARE YOU PASSIONATE ABOUT HERE AT NIU?

“I’m really passionate about our students and the kinds of transformational experiences we provide for them in and out of the classroom. I’ve taught here for a long time before I came into administration, and I’ve always really appreciated our students because they are incredibly hardworking and earnest and committed to their educational goals,” Elish-Piper said. “It’s so rewarding to get to work with them to see the growth and the progress that they make.” 

“I’m really passionate about providing these really meaningful transformational learning experiences in the classroom,” Elish-Piper said. “Whether that’s an opportunity to be part of faculty-mentored research, whether that’s an opportunity to be part of community-engaged work, or to have the chance to be out in the field, applying what you’re learning in a practicum or in an internship, doing hands-on learning in the classroom, doing problem-based learning. I’m really passionate about high quality instruction and transformational learning experiences in the classroom.”