THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 3, 1995 TAG: 9504030041
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 146 lines
Jo Ann Gora is tough.
A decade ago, on vacation with her then-teenage son, she went hang-gliding in Kitty Hawk, N.C. - for two weeks.
Since she moved to Norfolk in 1992 to become provost of Old Dominion University, she has taken on a far more daunting challenge: policing faculty teaching loads, one of the most sensitive issues on campuses these days.
She collected data on every faculty member's course schedule. She met with deans to find out why some professors taught fewer than three courses a semester. And she told all department chairmen that they had to teach at least two classes a semester, no matter how great their administrative duties.
``Nobody likes to be told they need to take on more responsibility,'' Gora said. ``But if that's what's appropriate, then it needs to happen. . . . The issue is the need for us to be teaching students - that's our primary responsibility.''
Gora, 49, also has been scrutinizing academic budget items, observers say, getting explanations for - and sometimes rejecting - requests that previously never were challenged. For the first time in recent memory, one administrator says, the vice president is running the deans, not the other way around.
Gora also has pushed new initiatives at the university.
Her pet project, to begin in the fall, is the Career Advantage program, which will offer every student the opportunity for a one-semester internship. She has overseen the rapid expansion of Teletechnet, which beams courses across Virginia, and the drafting of a strategic plan charting ODU's goals in the next decade.
Her fast-paced, jam-packed agenda has unsettled some ODU long-timers, who grumble about micro-management and a ``shoot-from-the-hip, think-later'' style. A handful of deans, chairmen and professors refused to comment on the provost last week.
But mostly, Gora has won strong praise for her forcefulness, honesty and high energy.
``I like the fact that she's tough-minded and decisive,'' said Lawrence J. Hatab, the philosophy chairman. ``She says what she thinks and she's not afraid to ruffle feathers, yet she also tries to bring out positive things in discussion. I think it's a good balance.''
Gordon K. Davies, director of the State Council of Higher Education, also likes her.
``She is very clearly one of the leading chief academic officers in the state,'' Davies said. ``She knows how to work with faculty and effect change without creating chaos.
``She is firm, tough, yet reasonable.''
As provost, Gora is the No. 2 administrator at ODU. She oversees all academic matters and runs the campus when President James V. Koch is away. She'll take the reins a lot more next semester.
From September to December, she will be acting president while Koch is on sabbatical in Australia. Gora will be the first female president of a doctoral institution in Virginia's history.
Until three years ago, she had spent nearly all her life in New York and New Jersey.
Gora grew up in Queens, N.Y., the daughter of a house painter and a high school business teacher. After she graduated from Vassar College in 1966, she got a job writing and producing commercials for a Delaware radio station.
She learned she was the lowest-paid employee at the station and left. ``I decided if a woman wanted to be successful, she needed an advanced degree.''
Gora got her master's and doctoral degrees in sociology from Rutgers University in New Jersey. In 1976, she joined Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, N.J., rising from instructor to dean of the college of arts and sciences.
In fall 1992, Gora switched from Fairleigh Dickinson to ODU to replace Myron S. Henry, who had become provost of Kent University in Ohio.
``She listens to what you say, but if she has something else she wants to do, she's not afraid to take action,'' said Paul J. Champagne, chairman of the management department and former chairman of the Faculty Senate. ``One of the frustrations I had with the previous provost was sometimes things would drag and sit too long. I like decisiveness.''
Professors also credit her for speaking her mind, like a true New Yorker. ``I don't like game-playing,'' she said. ``I try to be very direct with people, but respectful of our differences.''
At a recent meeting that Gora held with 30 chairmen, art chairwoman Carol F. Hines made a pitch to restore some cuts in faculty travel allotments. ``We need visibility,'' Hines said. ``We need to be networking with our peers. I know in our field, we're noticeably not there.''
Gora, polite but firm, held out little hope. ``We're not a rich institution,'' she said, ``and there's not the money for all the things we want to do.''
Hatab thinks she's made a mistake with the two-course requirement for chairmen.
It's OK for him, Hatab said, but ``some chairmen have so much work, even teaching one course is too much. Sometimes a good idea cannot be applied uniformly.'' Gora, however, insists that chairmen - all chairmen - have to be a regular presence in the classroom.
Critics of the push for bigger teaching loads, which is sweeping both Virginia and the nation, say it will cut out valuable research.
Gora responds: ``I value research a great deal, but that does not mean that that should diminish your attention to undergraduates or your attention to teaching.''
She said she wrote two books in New Jersey, ``and most of the time I did that without any release time'' from teaching. Many faculty members at ODU will continue to get time off from teaching to do research, she said, but only if they have strong track records.
Gora says she's not always unwilling to budge on issues. Take the Career Advantage program. She initially wanted to require an internship for all students. The faculty thought that might be burdensome and suggested, instead, guaranteeing an internship for every student who wanted one. She listened.
``I wanted the faculty enthusiastic about this idea,'' she said. ``No idea works without faculty behind it.''
At home, she was even more flexible, says her 23-year-old son, Jesse.
``Whenever I had a baby-sitter, I would say, `I don't have a set time to go to sleep,' and it was true. I didn't have a formal curfew. She definitely was not a tough disciplinarian. I didn't get punished, but I turned out OK.'' He graduated last year from Brown University in Rhode Island and plans to begin work on a doctorate in psychology at Rutgers, his mother's alma mater.
Their trips together started when he was in grade school. They have rafted down the Delaware River, skied in Colorado, gone rock-climbing in California. The vacations have established a close bond, free of the stiffness that characterizes many mother-son relationships, he said. ``We talk to each other
Next semester, when Gora sits in for Koch, she foresees no big changes. ``I don't intend to make a dramatic difference; I see next semester as a continuation of this semester.''
She and Koch both deny rumors floating across campus that he will never return and she will stay on as president. ``I firmly believe that President Koch is coming back,'' she said. ``I would bet any amount of money on that.''
Besides, Gora said, ``I really do not desire to be president, believe it or not. I like being the chief academic officer, dealing with faculty issues. I enjoy the responsibility I have.''
And she doesn't hesitate to use it. MEMO: A TOUGH BUT FAIR LEADER
JO ANN GORA
Job: Provost, Old Dominion University
Age: 49
Salary: $129,000
Education: B.A., Vassar College, 1966; M.A., Rutgers University,
1972; Ph.D., Rutgers, 1979
Previous experience: Professor, assistant academic dean of arts and
sciences, special assistant to the president, senior campus dean, dean
of arts and sciences, Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1976 to 1992
Books: ``The New Female Criminal'' (published in 1982), ``Emergency
Squad Volunteers (1985)
Residence: Riverfront neighborhood, Norfolk
Personal: Divorced; one son, Jesse, 23
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY by CNB