Oct 27, 2025
Interim Provost highlights collaboration, research growth in return to VCU
Warren visits College of Health Professions to talk research impact, tenure guidelines, interdisciplinary care
VCU interim provost Beverly J. Warren, Ed.D., Ph.D. visited the VCU College of Health Professions to hold a town hall with faculty and staff, where she praised leaders for its energy and ongoing evolution of its offerings.
“The piece that impresses me so much about this College is that you care about the full capacity of the College to deliver on its mission,” she said. “We are focused on access and we're focused on excellence, and all of that can blend into the way that we serve our students, and in the way that we contribute to the national and international knowledge base around your work.” She highlighted the efforts of both faculty and staff and recognized their support of service activities such as the HIllard House, a short-term emergency shelter in Richmond for children and adults.
Warren served as Provost from 2011 through 2014 and stepped back into the interim role following the departure of Fotis Sotiropoulos, Ph.D., to Penn State University. A national search for a permanent Provost is underway.
Warren praised VCU’s trajectory as a top research institution, noting it is projecting more than $550 million in sponsored research funding this year, calling its research growth “a true inflection point for Virginia Commonwealth University.” VCU’s research rankings place it among the top 20 research universities.
She also noted research faculty at the College of Health Professions have secured $4.7 million in research awards in the first fiscal quarter, with another $17 million already in the works for the rest of the year.
“We have excelled,” she said, acknowledging a challenging external environment for federal research funding that faculty and leaders have worked to overcome. “We have demonstrated that we have the spark to create innovative programming, innovative research, and really move forward with research that changes lives, often saves lives and creates an environment of a healthcare world that is more just, more accessible and delivers the most current and up-to-date care possible.”
Interdisciplinary opportunities
Warren pointed to new initiatives that bring faculty and students together across disciplines.
The College of Health Professions and VCU is “an invitation to come and play in an interdisciplinary space,” she said. “My hope is that we have undergraduate students that are thinking about ways to create their own degree as they’re starting to look at what they might want to see in healthcare in their life and their contributions to that.”
She highlighted the Provost office’s launch of “Convergence Labs,” which are bringing together faculty across all schools and colleges to collaborate on interdisciplinary curricula. The Labs launched in the fall with three themes: Artificial Intelligence, Neurosciences and Health Outcomes.
“Convergence Labs are meant to be spaces where faculty, staff and students come together to tackle real-world challenges — the intractable problems that we see that need to be resolved,” Warren said. She highlighted Faika Zanjani, Ph.D., associate dean for research in the Department of Gerontology, for her leadership on the neurodegeneration efforts within the Neurosciences Convergence Lab. The Provost said it was critical for faculty — not administrators — to lead the labs as they are the ones with the understanding of the respective disciplines. “That's not something the Provost can design,” Warren said.
Tenure and promotion guidelines
Warren addressed the pending update to promotion and tenure policies that are designed, she said, to align with the standards of other top research institutions known as R1 universities. Promotion and tenure guidelines were last updated in 2014. “It’s time,” she said.
For faculty, it means attaining the highest terminal degree for one’s field of study. Some faculty have voiced concerns over the requirement of a terminal degree versus having industry or research experience.
Warren acknowledged concerns but maintained that requiring a terminal degree and raising research expectations is consistent with peer institutions.
“Excellence will be determined within your school and college, not by what’s excellent” at competing universities, she said. “Excellence is evaluated right here, in the framework of what we have as our resources and our expectations for faculty. The idea is that excellence will be evaluated when you are producing research, scholarly articles or presentations that have a national or international impact — because that’s our role.”
“We are moving toward what has been expected of us all along,” Warren added, pointing to expectations from VCU’s accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. “As a major R1 university, we have to align with the standards of our peers. I know you can rise to that occasion.”
She emphasized that the guidelines are not meant to create a hierarchy between tenure-track and term faculty. Instead, she described differentiated roles: tenure-track professors carry reduced teaching loads but are expected to produce research at the highest level, while term faculty often take on heavier teaching responsibilities. In this way, VCU can ensure excellence in both domains, she said.
“I want to challenge you to think about this as well. And what brings you joy?” Whether teaching or research, lean in, she said. “It’s just a matter of what will be rewarded in tenure and promotion. That is not punishment. It’s where you do your best work.”
A culture of care
In closing, Warren emphasized the values she believes define VCU and what the Provost’s office calls a “Culture of Care.”
She recalled meeting recently with new VCU faculty “who had other options” but chose to come here “because of a collaborative spirit they didn't have elsewhere.”
“We are uniquely, quirkily collaborative and very willing to lift everyone up to be successful,” Warren said. “There’s not the highly competitive environment you might see at other R1 universities, and yet, we succeed, we produce and we serve because of the environment we have created.”
She also praised VCU for building “a diverse institution that welcomed all and discriminated against no one.”
“VCU looks like a microcosm of the world in terms of the way we have diversity of beliefs, diversity of cultures, diversity in the way we look — welcoming everyone to come and be your best self in this environment,” she said. “Because when we do that, we all succeed.”