{"id":25774,"date":"2025-04-22T15:17:21","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T15:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/pegasus\/?p=25774&post_type=story"},"modified":"2025-05-12T18:05:20","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T18:05:20","slug":"leading-the-charge","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/pegasus\/leading-the-charge\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading the Charge"},"content":{"rendered":"

University provosts are institutions\u2019 chief academic officers, guiding educational offerings for students and development and hiring efforts for faculty<\/a>. As the second-highest level of leadership at a university, the people appointed to these positions \u2014 including Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½\u2019s Michael D. Johnson \u2014 are experts in building a strategic vision and determining how to achieve it.<\/p>\n

While Johnson \u2014 who started at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ 35 years ago as an assistant professor supporting the new physics doctoral program<\/a> \u2014 certainly has the wisdom and keen foresight of a senior academic administrator, he considers himself a student and servant to Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½. That service will be complete this summer when he retires.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had this remarkable set of opportunities to do things that are really interesting. And I\u2019ve had almost no opportunity to get bored,\u201d says Johnson, who was dean of the College of Sciences<\/a> from 2011 to 2020. \u201cI\u2019ve been learning new things all the time and, I hope, doing good things for the university. I certainly tried.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Johnson spends a lot of time meeting with people across the university and speaking at various events, the self-proclaimed introvert spends even more time listening to faculty, chairs and deans about where Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ should be heading and how he can help remove hurdles to get there.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople expect us to help students get good first jobs out of college and have good careers. That\u2019s our duty and it\u2019s part of our mission. But it\u2019s not all of our mission,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of what I\u2019ve done is thinking about how to invest money that the state has generously invested in Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½, which ultimately means who should we hire. They\u2019ve invested with us explicitly to help strengthen engineering and technology<\/a> because of their significance to the state of Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when we carry out our obligation to support the public good, and we do support the public good, it becomes opportunities for us to become great,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen this university develop from a regional institution into something that\u2019s really playing on a high level across all of higher education.\u201d \u2014 Michael D. Johnson, provost<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Johnson has witnessed Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½\u2019s evolution as Florida\u2019s Premier Engineering and Technology University parallel the growth of related industries and partner companies<\/a>, like Lockheed Martin and Electronic Arts, around Central Florida. While excellence in STEM continues to be a hallmark of Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½, he knows from a faculty and administrative level \u2014 and for the benefit of all students \u2014 that every discipline contributes to the strength of one another and Knight Nation as a whole.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe taking advantage of the university\u2019s technology focus, where it makes sense, will help each academic area leap past programs at other universities, and develop into something unique and excellent on the national landscape,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

That level of impact and growing reputation, Johnson notes, is partially tied to Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½\u2019s location in one of America\u2019s most dynamic and economically robust cities<\/a>, providing competitive advantages over older institutions across Florida and the nation. It\u2019s part of the reason he came to Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ decades ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the years we\u2019ve harnessed growth to improve our quality and expand our mission,\u201d Johnson says. \u201cI\u2019ve seen this university develop from a regional institution into something that\u2019s really playing on a high level across all of higher education. Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ is becoming one of the best universities in the country. It\u2019s just been an incredible trajectory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learn more about Johnson and his plans after retirement.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019re emphatic about your love for teaching. Did you ever imagine you would trade in that profession to become a leader at a university?<\/strong>
\nI was totally tongue-tied as a young person. I was very insecure in my first administrative job as an assistant, then associate, dean [of the College of Sciences]. And the only reason I ever contemplated continuing down that path is that is an older person pulled me aside and told me, \u201cYou would be a good dean.\u201d<\/p>\n

That caught me totally by surprise. It changed the course of my life. It caused me to think about something that I had never thought of as a path. And then it gave me some confidence to move in that direction later on. People don\u2019t always realize how important their words can be to people starting out their careers.<\/p>\n

How has your perspective shifted as you progressed from an assistant professor to administrative roles?<\/strong>
\nI have sincerely held opposite beliefs at different times in my career.<\/p>\n

When I started out, I was thinking about myself, my career, my research, my teaching, all those \u201cmy\u201ds. And that\u2019s OK. It\u2019s not easy to be a new faculty member. It\u2019s really hard to develop good teaching and a healthy research career. It\u2019s really hard \u2014 and significant \u2014 to earn tenure for those of us on the tenure track. So I understand all of that.<\/p>\n

But of course, in a university, everything we do matters a great deal. And I learned better.<\/p>\n

As a dean, your job is to develop every department. And when I became dean, the departments were at different levels of development, with different needs and opportunities. You have to develop a reasonable strategy for how to balance those and how to emphasize strategic priorities.<\/p>\n

When I got these administrative jobs, it felt like I had been moving one arm for 20 years doing physics. And then I had to move my other arm and do something completely different. At first when I started teaching, it was the joy of learning and helping students. As my role changed, I came to gradually understand the real joy of the job is about helping others, faculty, researchers and staff, and the institution.<\/p>\n

But even more than that, I entirely didn\u2019t recognize the privilege of working in public higher education when I started out working here. In public higher education, we have this fantastic mission that I referred to about doing good for the public. It\u2019s not our job to educate the smallest possible fraction of young people. It\u2019s our job to educate as many from all walks of life as we can.<\/p>\n

You became interim provost in 2020 when Alexander N. Cartwright was named president (and the \u201cinterim\u201d was removed in January 2022). What was it like navigating this new responsibility during the pandemic?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first year was really hard. Many people were very worried about being back in face-to-face education. That\u2019s especially true of the faculty. That makes sense because we didn\u2019t understand COVID-19 at the beginning. We came to understand that it\u2019s much more dangerous for people as they got older. Not all diseases are like that, right? The Spanish flu in the early 20th century affected young people at a very high rate.<\/p>\n

So a lot of faculty, even more than students, were very unhappy to be told they had to teach in-person again. That was hard to work through. So it didn\u2019t feel normal for a long time. The last two-and-a-half years is when the president and I have been able to focus on where we are going as a university.<\/p>\n

I would say we still feel the repercussions of the pandemic. We still are more scattered as a community and less pulled together than we were pre-COVID-19. It\u2019s not that you can\u2019t work from home, but part of the joy in your job is the people you\u2019re with. And many of us have less of that than we did before the pandemic. It\u2019s rebuilding, but it needs to be continued to be built.<\/p>\n

A university is about people and it\u2019s the best when its people are together.<\/p>\n

Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ was founded as an engineering school and continues to excel in this area, as well as in technology. But Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ also excels in hospitality, healthcare, the sciences, education and more. Why is it important to invest in these fields alongside engineering and technology?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an obvious thing that a university, in fact, has many parts. I think the path that\u2019s going to help make this university continue to be great is this vision about engineering and technology. It absolutely does not <\/em>mean that we should restrict our concerns to only technology fields \u2014 that would give students a terrible education.<\/p>\n

When educating students, it\u2019s also our obligation to help young adults become capable citizens in a democracy. And more than that, to provide opportunity to learn about the wonderful things that humankind has done over the centuries. And more than that, to help people understand the wonders of the world around them, whether it\u2019s different people, the natural world or the arts.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s our obligation to educate, not just to prepare students for jobs. And I really<\/em> care that both of those things happen. I don\u2019t think I understood that when I started out. I hope all of us sort of understand differently as time goes on. I\u2019d like to think better, but at least differently.<\/p>\n

After 35 years of service at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½, what are your plans for retirement?<\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t have strong plans \u2014 I\u2019ve been too busy to make them. But I know a couple things.
\nMy wife and I play competitive bridge these days, and I would like to get as good at that as I possibly can.<\/p>\n

Another is, I\u2019m really annoyed that I live in Florida, and I can\u2019t speak Spanish.
\nAnd I\u2019ve been annoyed about that for about 20 years. So I\u2019m trying to learn Spanish. My daughter lives in Miami, has two children and her husband\u2019s family is from Peru. I\u2019d like to be able to communicate with his family more.<\/p>\n

So learning is all that I really know right now. I\u2019m sure there will be more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":25838,"template":"","categories":[],"tags":[287,1729],"class_list":["post-25774","story","type-story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-college-of-sciences","tag-michael-d-johnson","issues-spring-2025"],"yoast_head":"\nÂ鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ Provost Michel D. Johnson Reflects on Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ Before Retiring<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"After 30+ years of an evolving career at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½, Provost Michael D. Johnson steps down this summer with confidence.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ Provost Michel D. 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