Photo credit: Nicholas Chismar

Moravian Selects New Provost

After the conclusion of a nationwide search, Vice Provost Carol Traupman-Carr ’86, P’12 has been named provost and dean of faculty, effective May 9, 2022. She will replace Cynthia Kosso, who is retiring after serving as Moravian’s provost and dean of faculty since 2015. Kosso will assist with the transition and officially retire on June 30, 2022. We asked Traupman-Carr a few questions.

What is your vision for this position? How will you make it your own?


I can only be who I am, and I look forward to the challenges that stepping into the provost’s role presents for me at the institution I love. I didn’t want to take any provost role: That is to say, 
I didn’t aspire to be a provost. I wanted to be this provost, our provost, at my beloved alma mater.

Being an alum and the provost working side by side with a president who is also an alum presents a great opportunity. What makes our partnership different than other president-provost combinations at other institutions is our very, very deep love for the institution.

We are both incredibly grateful for the education and the opportunities Moravian presented to us, but we aren’t interested in re-creating the Moravian of our youths. That Moravian can’t exist in today’s higher education market. We are serving different students and different societal needs. We are a university now. Our faculty and staff have different needs in order to succeed at their jobs. Our institutional goals are different.

Bryon and I are really excited at what could emerge from working together toward this shared vision of what Moravian could be. We don’t always agree on the specifics, but we agree on the general principles: thriving, remaining student-focused, keeping faculty central to the academic enterprise, and partnering with members and institutions in our community.

"The second half of your life is about giving back. I wanted this opportunity to give back to Moravian."

We are both idea generators. In addition, I am someone who gets stuff done. And that’s important. All the great ideas in the world don’t mean a thing if they don’t come to fruition. And 
I think I can say that I have a pretty good track record here, with creating AIM [Advance Into Moravian], helping to revise curricula, suggesting the speech-language pathology program, establishing Alpha Alpha Alpha, and more.

None of this is about me, however, and in fact many of the good ideas that you are hearing about or seeing in action have come from faculty and staff across the institution. I want to encourage faculty, in particular, to embrace this spirit of innovation in their teaching, scholarship, and service. This is not just about making Moravian sustainable. It’s about getting us past surviving—when many institutions are closing—to thriving. And not just while I am the provost but well beyond, well into the future.

Moravian College changed my life. I hope that Moravian University can be around for at least another 280 years, changing students’ lives for the better, as it did for me. To do that, we have to work together. The provost cannot do this alone, no matter how hard she works, no matter how many ideas she generates. We—the faculty, staff, alumni, trustees—have to collaborate to ensure our future. And coming out of the pandemic (we will get out of the pandemic at some point, right?), we need to rebuild those parts of our community that suffered most and work toward shared goals, communicate appropriately, and celebrate our successes.

What is something you would like to say to the entire Moravian University community—faculty, staff, students, and alumni?


I am a fan of the author Richard Rohr, and in particular, his book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for a Life in Two Halves. Rohr writes that in the first half of your life, you spend your time creating your identity, sometimes reinventing yourself; establishing your values, your goals, and developing into the person you are meant to be. That part of my life is in the past. Much as I like to think of myself as middle aged, if I am, then I will live to be well over 100! But I am in the second half of my life. And the second half of your life is about giving back. I wanted this opportunity to give back to Moravian. I’m not talking about giving financially, though I know Bryon and Jill [Anderson] will always appreciate that! I’m talking about giving back through leadership, service, mentorship; by generating ideas and supporting the ideas of faculty, students, and staff; by reinventing our community after COVID. I look forward to the opportunity to work with our students, faculty, staff, and alumni to honor our alma mater while building the Moravian of the future.