Chancellor

A chancellor is a leader of a college or university, usually either the executive or ceremonial head of the university or of a university campus within a university system. In Spirit College, Tony Camacho, formerly the Director of The Gateway Portal in Los Angeles, is partnering with Mike Ratner in running Spirit College and conducts podcast style interviews with new instructors.  Tony is also a C.Ht., NLP Practitioner, an accredited Clinical Hypnotherapist, and Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming with a focus on facilitating empowerment and self-awareness to make life-altering changes.

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President

This is a co-CEO position, and the president is, in the simplest terms, the operations head of the entire institution. The President of Spirit College is Michael D. Ratner, PhD and Mike's role is to lead the overall strategic planning for and sustained performance of our institution. In other countries, this position is also called the Chancellor.  In the future we are looking at developing new divisions, mini-academies, think tanks or institutions within the virtual college campus system and the leader of each campus will be called a Chancellor, who reports to the President of the overall college.

 

Provost

We do not have anyone named on staff yet but a Provost is, in essence, the VP of a university. Most often, this position is considered to be the senior academic administrator in charge of curricular and research tasks. The provost may sometimes act as president during a vacancy, such as the time between a president leaving and a new one being hired.  Almost always, provosts are selected from faculty (see “faculty” below). Provost is similar to chancellor in that it may refer to the title of the leader at a particular branch campus within a university system. Some other titles used for this same position include chief academic officer or vice president for academic affairs. Titles such as assistant provost, associate provost, vice provost, or deputy provost will report to and work directly with this position.

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Dean

The dean is an administrator who leads a particular academic unit, such as a department or school within the college.  Deans of individual departments often report to either the president or the provost of a school. The role of the dean often includes leading the faculty of the particular department or school, fundraising, setting academic policies, etc. It isn’t rare for a dean to also be a professor in the department. In addition, there is often a dean of students or dean of faculty, who serves as the “voice” representing those parties in day-to-day administration.  We will be naming new Deans very shortly.

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Board of Advisers

Okay, so these members roles can be a little confusing. A Board of Advisers give advice and guidance to the college.  They have no power or legal function but serve as the consciousness and debate the direction of the college.  Advisers are different from Trustees which represent a corporate body that has complete responsibility for the government and welfare of a school. The Spirit College board is made up of distinguished advisers who, in almost all cases, don’t hold any positions at the school itself (this, of course, doesn’t include key constituents such as the university president, and occasionally deans and faculty). The board will often include well-known alumni and activists or progressive leaders to help guide ideas. This group—which ranges in size depending on school population, public or private affiliation, etc.—does such duties as selecting the board chair, determining major goals of the college, approving motions, guiding procedures, reviewing the budget, and other related tasks.

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Faculty

As most know, faculty refers to the body of instructors and professors that teach courses to students. There are several different levels of faculty that represent the teaching members at Spirit College:

• All faculty at Spirit College are independent agents (no one is hourly or salaried as paid staff).

• Adjunct Professors and Full Rank Professors are certified and have taken particular courses that qualified them to become instructors at Spirit College.  Most all teach on their own time, as they post new courses, some seasonal and all instructors update their materials regularly.  Some teach live classes depending on what courses they offer. These instructors do not generally have research responsibilities, and are involved with Spirit College based on the demand of a particular course. (All instructors are independent contractors paid strictly through students enrolled in their course)

• Anyone is welcome to teach at Spirit College as long as they have completed our Instructor course and have been approved to teach particular subjects.  Since there is no salaried staff there are no tenured faculty members.  While some instructors comparably may make a full-time professors salary based on the number of students they have enrolled in their courses, the money instructors make (again) is based on the number of paid courses, e-text books, etc or enrollments they sell. 

• Some faculty members may offer seminars, coaching and other work such as doing research in addition to teaching courses, and most (if not all) famous professors have had books published. 

• Additionally, we are considering having teaching assistants, or TAs, which are graduate or Ph.D. students who teach undergraduate courses. TAs often teach those courses as part of a barter compensation package to help pay for their higher degree program.  Something to consider!