R. M. Tanner
Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Biography
R. Michael Tanner joined UIC as Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs in July 2002 after a 30-year long career at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He holds bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University. At UCSC, he served in several capacities. He was chair of the department of computer and information sciences, acting dean of natural sciences and academic vice chancellor, overseeing all the academic components of the campus, including academic planning and new program review. He was academic and executive vice chancellor for nine years, serving as chief operating officer for a campus of 11,500 students. In 2000, Dr. Tanner was named interim director for the University of California Silicon Valley Center, where he was responsible for developing a satellite campus for 2,000 students at the NASA Research Park in the NASA Ames Research Center, in the heart of Silicon Valley.
At UIC, Dr. Tanner has renewed a sense of campus identity by leading broad, participatory “strategic thinking” and strategic planning efforts. Acting on his commitment to rational and transparent processes, he has implemented new ICR and tuition allocation models that distribute resources proportionally to the units generating them, and he is presently developing a space allocation model that provides financial incentives for better utilization. Dr. Tanner has led the campus in reaffirming a legacy of diversity by appointing a Special Assistant for Diversity and committees to coordinate recruitment and retention activities, to the benefit of all students and faculty. He is the PI for an NSF ADVANCE grant to promote inclusion of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; and he has championed a program of institutional financial aid to maintain student access in the face of rising tuition. Under Dr. Tanner’s administration, undergraduate education has been enriched with a new general education curriculum, improved course availability, and stronger assessment practices. These efforts were major contributors to UIC’s successful reaccreditation by the North Central Association (NCA) in 2007. The UIC Innovation Center is one of several interdisciplinary research and teaching initiatives spanning multiple colleges created or invigorated under Dr. Tanner’s leadership.
Among Dr. Tanner’s personal interests are issues of sustainability and energy consumption. In 2003, he chaired a University of Illinois utility committee to study energy production, procurement and consumption. Since 2007, he has co-chaired a second University of Illinois energy task force, which authored a policy on energy conservation recently adopted by the Board of Trustees. The recommendations of the Task Force are already causing fundamental changes in the way the University as a whole approaches its energy systems.
As a noted advocate for academic needs and faculty rights in scholarly communication, Dr. Tanner was the principal author of the University-wide Task Force on Copyright at the University of California and a featured speaker at the 2004 CIC Summit on Scholarly Communication and the 2005 UIC Nakata Lecture. His 2007 “Copyrights and the Paradox of Scholarly Publishing” can be found on the CIC website, and he contributed to the development of a CIC Author’s Copyright Contract Addendum. Dr. Tanner was also moderator and principal organizer of a panel on “The Changing Nature of Scholarship in the Digital Age” at the 2007 NASULGC meeting.
His research interests include coding and information theory, computer simulation models, educational uses of information technology, and intellectual property, and he is recognized as the founder of the field of “codes on graphs.” He holds four patents and is a fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.