Johns Hopkins Gazette: August 21, 1995

Princeton's Smith Takes Helm At Human Resources


Dennis O'Shea
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Homewood News and Information


     The first task, the university's new vice president of human
resources says, is to listen.

     "I don't believe I come with all the answers," Audrey Smith
said. "I have a broad background in human resources, and lots of
experience. But I would hope to talk with enough people to be
able to identify the issues and then work collaboratively with
them to develop the solutions."

     Smith, currently vice president for human resources at
Princeton University, will join Johns Hopkins Nov. 1, succeeding
Edgar E. Roulhac, who has served as interim vice president since
November 1994.

     "It's a pleasure to welcome Audrey Smith to Hopkins," said
Daniel Nathans, interim president. "Her role here--helping us
enhance an environment where everyone can work effectively and
with real satisfaction--is critical to the future of the
university." 

     "Audrey Smith has a wonderful track record in human
resources," said Eugene S. Sunshine, senior vice president for
administration, to whom Smith will report. "She's a terrific team
player, knowledgeable and well-skilled and an extremely effective
person in a university environment.

     "She is the perfect person to maintain the momentum we've
established in such areas as career training and development,
work environment issues, revision of our job classification
system, and diversity," Sunshine said. "She is also the right
person to maintain the quality and breadth of our benefits
program."

     Smith, at Princeton since 1989, has led a review of the
university's benefits program in an effort to provide better
value to employees and the university. She is also known for
creative approaches to minority and women's concerns, including
an apprenticeship program for minority employees. She worked with
the university's provost and dean of the faculty to create a
formal sexual harassment policy.

     "When I visited Hopkins, I felt good about the place," Smith
said. "I felt good about the kinds of values people talked about,
about what the university is trying to accomplish ... in
diversity, in trying to address the issues of the 21st century.
... I would like to be a part of that."

     Smith, who grew up in Maryland, said she looks forward to
returning for a position at Hopkins, which she said "has always
been a very special place to me." She also said she is eager for
the challenge of tackling human resources issues in a university
with roughly four times as many employees as Princeton's 5,000.

     "It will be a new challenge to me, in that Hopkins is
structured in a very different way than Princeton, very
decentralized," she said. "There will be new issues to address,
and I'll need to look at the issues in a different way than I
have at Princeton, which is very centrally organized."

     But Smith doesn't expect radical change in her approach to
the job. She is known at Princeton for maintaining an open door
to employees, and hopes to find ways to do that in a larger
setting. She also is determined to work closely with managers and
staffers throughout the university.

     "One of the things I try to do is find out first what the
goal is," she said. "Frequently, personnel offices in the past
really served to make sure people abided by procedure; it was a
policeman's role.

     "That's not the role of human resources today, in my view,"
she says. "We're here to help people develop and manage their
resources. We need to have their input on policy and programs as
we develop them."

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Roulhac Kept Human 
Resources On Track

     Edgar E. Roulhac, interim vice president for human resources
since Jimmy Jones resigned from the university last year, will
return to his permanent position as the university's vice provost
for academic services.

     In that role, he focuses on university-wide issues involving
programs for part-time adult students and oversees
interdivisional centers for part-time education in Washington,
D.C., and Montgomery County.

     "I want to express my appreciation to Ed Roulhac for the
exceptional job he has done in Human Resources over the past
months," said Eugene S. Sunshine, senior vice president for
administration. "He has been committed to the task and succeeded
magnificently in keeping the operation on track."

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