Dr. Michael Kavic has a clear passion for education and connecting with students. On the website “Rate My Professor” he has a list of glowing allocations including: “He clearly has a strong concern for his students”… “Awesome, funny, professor”… “He is perhaps the best professor in this school”… “He is honestly amazing inside and out… “He truly wants to see everyone succeed” and so many more. It is with this passion for education and striving for commutative success that Dr. Kavic takes on his new position as Assistant Provost for Research and Strategic Academic Initiatives at SUNY Old Westbury.
At the beginning of the fall semester, Dr. Duncan Quarless, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, made an announcement to SUNY Old Westbury faculty and staff. “The establishment of this reconfigured role within Academic Affairs is part of restructuring efforts within the division to better meet emerging needs and to assist in advancing the strategic objectives of the Office of Academic Affairs.”
Dr. Quarless continued, “Dr. Kavic will provide leadership in support of assessment, faculty development and scholarship with an added emphasis on sponsored programs and research along with targeted initiatives that heighten the related academic experiences for students.”
Dr. Kavic has been working at SUNY Old Westbury since 2018 and teaching courses such as Astronomy and the Structure of Physics. He previously taught at Long Island University and The College of New Jersey. It is with his passion for teaching that he comes to the newly created position. He said, “My job is to really help advance and support the faculty in their research and help advance academic programs that are new, innovative and exciting for students… This is an exciting challenge and a great opportunity to really move the campus forward.”
Dr. Kavic said his plans include helping faculty get away from what he describes as, “the movie theater style of education…Where you go into a lecture hall and there is a person standing in the front of a room – maybe you are paying attention- maybe you are not- but it’s separate from you.” He says the new modern way of teaching is through an “active learning environment…where the students are more a part of what is going on in the classroom… We know that students learn better when they are involved in a more comprehensive educational experience.”
As a research professor, Dr. Kavic received a grant of $189,233 from the National Science Foundation to research the burst of radio waves produced by the merger of two neutron stars. As part of the grant, last week, a radio telescope was erected on campus where students in the department can actively participate in research. “That is exactly what we need more of,” he stated. He said students need to get involved with the cutting-edge technology and research. “To give them the opportunity to not only just hear about research or to study someone else’s research that was done 100 year ago but to participate in learning things that no-one has ever learned before,” said Dr. Kavic.
Over the course of his career, Dr. Kavic has authored or co-authored a total of fifty-five journal articles and his work has appeared in several publications including the Astrophysical Journal, The Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, and the Journal of High Energy Physics. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from Virginia Tech, his M.S. in Physics from the University of North Carolina and a B.S. in both Physics and Astrophysics from the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Kavic said he is excited about the new position and what is ahead for him and SUNY Old Westbury. “This position is about trying to bring the campus alive in terms of the exciting research and educational activities. I think it will be exciting work, it will be challenging, but I think in the end, we will do some really great things for the college.”
He says he wants to help “make this wonderful institution even better.”
