After almost seven months as interim provost, Cheryl Misak was appointed to the top job as U of T’s provost earlier this week by the Governing Council. “Not much will change. I’ve been interim provost since July and it’s not a job you can do in a tentative way,” said Misak, former philosophy professor and dean of U of T Mississauga campus.

Misak succeeded Vivek Goel in June 2008 after serving as the deputy provost for a year.

She has risen up the administrative ranks over the last ten years, acting as president and dean at UTM before serving as interim VP of campus life and interim provost at St. George campus. The more settled position, she said, will still keep her busy.

The provost’s office is responsible for all academic and budgetary matters ranging from resource management to dispensing student levies.

With an economic recession cutting into endowment payouts and rising graduate applications, allocating funds may prove to be a challenge.

No funding cuts have been proposed so far and Misak said she will be keeping a close eye on the economy.

“It’s become my first priority. We are very much trying to ensure that it doesn’t have significant effects on undergraduate or graduate programs.” According to the Postgrad Medical Education Office, medical research awards are now facing the axe.

Also on the provost’s radar is the Towards 2030 project, which, among other things, aims to encourage more academic research through corporate partnerships.

In the past decade, several of the university’s corporate sponsorships proved to be contentious, sparking protests and court cases.

Misak said that U of T has a lot of policies in place to ensure academic freedom and despite the expansion process, there would always be a need to “strengthen those mechanisms that maintain academic integrity.”

Since her appointment as interim provost, Misak is most known for creating the Advisory Committee on Democratic Process in Student Government.

Formed after the provost was called to intervene in the Arts & Science Student Union election scandal, the committee barely got through one meeting before student leaders boycotted the committee. Misak disbanded it earlier this month.

Student unions disagreed with committee’s framework and said its guidelines on democratic process would give the provost more power over student governments. Misak expressed her disappointment and said she had thought the committee was structured to ensure maximum student input.

A transparent democratic process, she said, is crucial to good student governance and plans to produce some guidelines by this summer. “Student leaders declined to participate in the process, but I will still take their suggestions informally.”

Although Misak’s new career is a far cry from lecturing on Plato and Aristotle, she feels as though she has never left the world of academia.

“I still get up in the morning at 5 a.m. and add to my book. One thing I miss, though, is teaching.”