I'm now in my second term in office, having just signed on for five additional years at Drew University. How would I grade my first term? I'd give myself an incomplete. I see a lot of rookie errors that extended well beyond the first year. But I find a few dos, too, among the don'ts to pass on. Here they are, presented as a musical countdown — a Top 10 hit parade for new presidents:
No. 10. "The Sound of Silence." In my first column in this series (The Chronicle, September 16, 2005), I mocked the clichéd albeit correct response to the presidential-interview question "What would you do first?" — "Listen." Sure, I replied, but you'd better arrive with something to say, too.
Now I would say, the less said that first year, the better. Every institution has its own habits, and the very policy you initially find bizarre may, upon examination, prove just right — or it may prove even more bizarre. The point is, you don't know yet. After a year, you will.
In the meantime, work with everyone to define the institutional strengths and to make everyone inside and beyond more aware of those strengths. Yes, the president needs to become the institution's harshest critic — but dude or dudette, you gotta sit through the movie before you write the review. And this movie is like Rashomon — that is, each new colleague will provide a distinctly different version of institutional reality. The most convincing individual may prove the nuttiest. Give yourself time to learn, and give everyone a break.
No. 9. "Never Smile at a Crocodile." Listen and look, but you do have to have an agenda. That's how you got the position. That agenda calls for some major changes. Make sure it becomes the real agenda of everyone on your administrative team.
It is an awkward fact that you are inheriting your predecessor's administration, and you certainly don't want to ride into town with your own Hell's Angels. Most of the people you inherit are wary of you. Nearly all the members of your inherited group are justifiably proud of the status quo that they have created, parts of which you will wish to change.
I would make two points. Sell the agenda to the members of your team, don't assume their assent. Get to know them, get them to know you, give everyone an opportunity to learn the new moves. But if you are facing a persistent resistance among those on whom you depend for support, it's time to say "See You Later, Alligator."
No. 8. "Walk — Don't Run." Here's a hit by a group aptly called the Ventures. You have a venture or two in store for the institution, but perhaps the operative phrase here is one or two, not dozens. Everyone claims to want more change than they really do. It has taken me this long to recognize that what my colleagues wanted assurance on, at first, was not that I had some exciting ideas but that I possessed wisdom. Now I hope to develop some. The saw that people change most and best when they feel safe is in every way applicable here.
No. 7. "Walk Away Renee." Yes, listen and go slowly, but it is all too easy to be swallowed by the institution's habitudes. You get a few golden passes to make some unilateral and bold decisions, so use them. That is something I feel I actually did right.
A faculty committee called together to debate making the SAT optional as a policy would have taken three years to come to a stalemate. I found some general agreement on that policy and put it in practice with the guarantee that we would review it as a pilot, and with a full willingness to reverse course if the results were poor. (With a year to go, and a major study of the policy under way, evidence so far suggests the policy works but needs tightening. That is, if the SAT isn't required, then perhaps we need to require a very strong grade-point average. But we will see.)
While faculty members, in particular, prize process, and while process is our bulwark against chaos, process can sponsor chaos if it becomes the end rather than the means. A few rapid changes make people happy. And everyone at Drew is proud of a first-year class with nearly triple the number of students of color as three years ago — an achievement that is, in part, a result of this policy.
No. 6. "I Second That Emotion." Invite invention but don't imagine that you can determine or even nominate the specific innovations.
Aside from circumstance, you cannot predict the interests of your new colleagues. Your job is to unleash them. That is another "do" I think I did right. A board-sponsored Presidential Initiatives Fund led to such innovations as the creation of a gospel choir, a new minor in public health, and a new major in environmental studies. The latter was accompanied by a Campus Greening Initiative that has pulled together not only faculty members from a wide variety of disciplines, but also local corporate heads and their natural enemies in a very exciting dialogue. A generous Mellon grant helped greatly, but even that simply tapped into a widely shared desire I never would have generated on my own.
I mention environmental studies at length because, as only my most faithful readers will recall, I'm the car buff for whom the phrase V8 did not signify an alternative to tomato juice but to midlife balding. When a friend bought a Prius, I suggested sardonically that perhaps his next auto might be a floating leaf. Now I'm thinking about a Prius, too.
As a president, your best ideas are never your own. Set a general theme — ours at Drew is attuning liberal-arts learning to social urgencies — and establish a spirit that says, Let's try it (and assess it, with the courage to pull any plug of an idea that doesn't light up). Let your colleagues tell you what you mean by your large themes.
No. 5. "Always Something There to Remind Me." Or, since Drew is in New Jersey, "Glory Days." Whenever you initiate a new program or concept, don't trumpet its newness, emphasize how it relates to the customs and proud traditions of the institution. That isn't merely rhetorical: Bend that new practice to the more usual ways of the university and it will be a better new practice than if you ignore the living past.
No. 4. "Alone Again (Naturally)." A lot of people don't like you when you are president, and I just hate being unliked.
Most of us in this job have gotten to this point not simply because we achieved something but also because our colleagues have enjoyed working with us. Now they are at a distance, no matter how small the institution. I thought I had good communication skills, but they are nothing compared with the blasts of the rumor horn. When I hear about President Bush's low approval ratings, I don't celebrate with my fellow liberals; I think, "Gee, I know how he feels." Despite my lack of tough skin, I nonetheless affirm that you simply must do what is right and forget the popularity. Pretentious as it might sound, the institution is your baby; and parents who court the approval of their children are lousy parents.
Tactlessness can be a fetish, too, but those who cannot separate making the right decision from the subsequent act of making the decision palatable need to find another calling.
For me, the toughest aspect of being a university president is making decisions as if I didn't care about the affection of the campus. I don't want to pretend not to care, either. But the only person's favor you can curry is that of your imagined successor.
No. 3. "On The Road Again." In your first year, everyone wants you to travel everywhere. Instead, be on the local road — own your campus. Show up everywhere, and tell the development people to wait. But not for long.
No. 2. "Money." Or as Barrett Strong (and then the Beatles) sang, "The best things in life are free/But you can keep 'em for the birds and bees/Now give me money/That's what I want." I've always resisted the notion of the president as glorified fund raiser, but that function is absolutely important. While friends generally sympathize that this is a vulgar aspect of the job — begging — it never feels that way to me. It feels like finding support beyond the campus for what we wish to do, and so I am not so much begging as advocating — and, as the development people like to say, rewarding people with the pleasure of giving back. You even end up caring more for the United States as you learn that this is a very strong habit here.
No. 1. "Yummy Yummy Yummy." As I enter my second term, I take solace in the notion that if the first three years of a presidency are for setting the table, the next three are the meal — a great feast, I hope, at Drew — and the final three a fully pleasurable dessert, unless, of course, "someone left the cake out in the rain" and the president ends up a "Nowhere Man."
But — and I am really sorry that this horrid song, by the logic of this list, is my No. 1 — you may admit to knowing the whole phrase: "Yummy yummy yummy/I got love in my tummy." And in fact, if you survive the first term, you find that your initial enthusiasm does indeed mature into an intense love for your university, something you experience at gut level. Loving Drew has become the best part of this job. If loving Drew is wrong, I don't wanna be right.
