City on a Hill Press (CHP) spoke with Marlene Tromp, the new campus provost and executive vice chancellor (CP/EVC) at UC Santa Cruz. Previously, Tromp worked as a dean at Arizona State University [ASU] and a professor of both women’s studies and English at
ASU and Denison University. Tromp will fill Herbert Lee’s interim role, after Alison Galloway stepped down in December. In 2015, the position paid nearly $345,000 salary.
CHP: As the new EVC at UCSC, how do you plan to learn more about what issues are directly affecting students?
Tromp: I met with a group of student leaders when I came to interview. It was a really important meeting for me because I wanted to hear what the student perspective was, about the experience at UCSC, about what they were getting from their experience. One thing that I will do when I arrive is make a point of meeting with student groups.
CHP: You mentioned that your expertise is in sexual violence. Do you have any ideas in particular that you’re going to work on with Title IX — what are you planning on it looking like?
Tromp: I co-chaired a “sexual violence prevention task force [at ASU],” and we produced a report with recommendations of what we thought would really transform culture there. Sometimes people think sexual violence is a problem that is isolated to college campuses. It’s a cultural problem. It’s not just something that happens in college campuses, but college campuses often provide an environment that ramps up sexual violence or makes people vulnerable. We wanted to think about ‘How do we actually start to change the way people think? What can we do?’”
CHP: Do you have other specific goals relating to UCSC?
Tromp: One thing I have thought about is that UCSC has one of the most impressive faculties in the world, and I think that there are not enough people who know that. Students are getting taught by people who are just at the cutting edge of knowledge generation. They are not people who are looking at what’s being produced out there in the world — they are people that are thinking the big, new ideas and coming up with the big, new theories and advancing knowledge in all these exciting ways.
