“It is the huge job at the university,” Senior Associate Provost June Youatt said. “If you’re not president, you want to be provost — if you are an academic.”

Provost beginnings

When he arrived on campus in August 2005 as the university’s new provost, Wilcox knew it was a job he was ready for.

He had been a professor, a researcher, a department chairman and a dean — a background that Youatt calls “classic” experience.

“I had been a dean at a large university and had an appreciation of what provosts do and their potential to have an impact on a school,” Wilcox, 54, said. “And to have that opportunity was pretty exciting.”

However, it was a job he “never dreamt” of having at a place he didn’t think he’d return to. Once Wilcox graduated from MSU in 1976 with a degree in audiology and speech sciences, it was on to Purdue University for graduate school to begin the process of becoming a professor, a career path Wilcox said he always wanted to pursue.

“I wanted to be a professor because I was convinced I could do it better than some of the professors I had when I was a freshman,” he said. “I don’t think they were very good teachers. They weren’t very organized. They weren’t very tolerant or flexible.”

But really, Wilcox never thought he’d be a provost when he was in school. Mostly because he didn’t know such a thing existed.

“As a student, you know a lot about the university, but there’s a lot you don’t know about the university. You don’t really understand how professors get hired, how they are evaluated, what they do with most of their time. You only see them a little bit of their working time,” he said. “It’s great now to come back and see the kinds of decisions that have been made over a long period of time and how they shaped what I experienced as a student and what values they represented.”

MSU student life

One of Wilcox’s defining experiences as an undergraduate student was working in the Holmes Hall cafeteria — the same residence hall he lived in while going to school.

“Four years!” he said, referencing the amount of time he lived there while laughing and throwing up an “L” on his forehead as a joke.

It was the people there though, that made the job and the living experience so great, he said.

Diane Barker, facilities manager for East Complex, worked with Wilcox in the cafeteria when they were students together in the 1970s. Her first year there, Wilcox was the student supervisor.

“The focus was we got our jobs done and we did it very well, but we also had fun working and we liked working together. And it isn’t just about Provost Wilcox, it was about the dynamics of that group in that time period. We connected very well,” Barker said. “The cafeteria life for us was a social life experience in itself, so on and off the job we networked, we had fun and we worked hard.”

Once Barker, who has worked on campus for 30 years, realized that Wilcox would be the new provost, she and others who knew him got a hold of him asking, “Is it really you?”

When the two reconnected, they met for lunch at Brody Complex where Barker worked at the time.

“I was kind of anxiously awaiting to see him again because I hadn’t seen him since he was a student and he hadn’t seen me since I was a student,” she said. “He kind of snuck up behind me and surprised me and I kind of jumped, and you know, it was just like old times. He was kind of being a little jokester and it was that same dynamic. And we just kind of picked up from where we left off.”

Dealing with stress

From his office on the fourth floor of the Administration Building, the full and lively Red Cedar River can be seen. The MSC smokestack is a part of the skyline.

After 6 p.m. the halls are quiet and dim, but for Wilcox, days don’t necessarily revolve around typical business hours. As he pulled up his schedule on his computer, almost every time slot is filled with one meeting or another. In fact, the following day was planned to go from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

He said he gets stressed out sometimes — “Everybody does,” he said with a small laugh.

“I get frustrated at times when I feel that I’m holding people up,” Wilcox said. “There’s so many great people here, students, faculty and staff, trying to get things done. And if they are waiting for me for something, that frustrates me, so I try not to get in that position.”

But those who work closely with him say he doesn’t show stress.

“He is able to see the fun in nearly everything,” Youatt said. “There are things where there isn’t much fun, but in every day he is able to find some fun. A lot of that is because he is basically optimistic. And he enjoys — he just loves this university and respects the people around him.”

In order to keep in check, Wilcox spends some of his free time singing in the MSU Choral Union — something some choral union members might not even know, said David Rayl, director of choral programs.

“He is a very devoted and enthusiastic member of the bass section,” Rayl said, adding that Wilcox sings in a baritone voice. “He just rolls up his sleeves along with everybody else and gets after it.”

Fond memories

As he peered out a window in the provost’s office, Wilcox looked down at people kayaking in the flooded Red Cedar, he said it reminded him of one of his own MSU memories.

In the spring of 1975, the river had risen so high that it threatened to flood Shaw Hall — sandbags had been placed around the dorm. Then, IM Sports-East and Wharton Center did not exist. At the time, there was a large IM field at that location that also had flooded.

“It was neck deep, so there was a whole bunch of us swimming in the IM fields that spring,” he said. “It was not very clean water — but it was fun.”

Among other memories that came up was a year when streaking was very popular.

“A few nights at dinner someone would streak through the cafeteria wearing nothing but tennis shoes,” he said.

Though his job now can be all-consuming, Wilcox said there were many reasons that attracted him to the position.

“Michigan State University appealed to me a lot. And yes, partly because I’m a graduate and partly because I still have family who live in Michigan, but mostly because it’s a great university and stands for great things,” he said. “Having a chance to be part of that was very appealing.”