Alumni Association Home > Minnesota Magazine > Past Issues > 2002 > September-October 2002	Print View

It was a steamy July afternoon, but in his cool office on Morrill Hall’s second floor, University President Mark Yudof didn’t have time to notice the heat. In the month since announcing he was leaving the University to become chancellor of the University of Texas system, Yudof’s days had been a whirlwind of meetings, trips to Texas, and preparations for the transition at the University. Between meetings, Yudof found time to reflect on his five years as president of the University of Minnesota and to offer Minnesota readers his thoughts on the present state of the U. Bob Bruininks is the interim president while a committee searches for the new University president.

Q: In your inaugural address in 1997, you said the University needs to be guided long-term by a set of core values. Yet many situations called for immediate action. Were there any quick decisions you felt were especially adept and any you wish you could make over again?

A: Only time will tell if they were the right decisions. I made a decision, which was very hard for me, to suspend some basketball players from playing in the NCAA tournament when I really did not have the type of due-process hearing that lawyers are accustomed to. But I needed to protect the institution and my instinct was that we had a problem, and that turned out to be right. When I was considering letting Clem Haskins go, I made what I thought was primarily an ethical decision. I don’t believe you fire people and take the position that you have evidence for dismissal for cause when you don’t. I thought that would be unethical, and that probably cost me something.

Q: What are you particularly proud of accomplishing here?

A: I think one thing that I’m proud about is what I’ll call the renaissance of the campuses: building some buildings that needed to be built, renewing hundreds of classrooms, opening up the University to the river as under the Cass Gilbert conception, building residence halls and laboratories, and so forth. . . . If you start out with the idea that you want to improve the place for students, what do you need to do? Part of it is the physical ambience, this idea that if the campus is better taken care of, there’s more pride.

But that also goes to making sure there’s enough space in the residence halls, improving course access, having convocation, offering freshman seminars, one-stop shopping for student services, an electronic version of applying for financial aid. I always viewed it as a sort of multi-prong effort to improve the life of all our students, but I particularly was focused on the undergraduates because they’re so numerous and at a big state university it’s easy to get lost.

[Students] didn’t like it, but the banding of tuition and minimum course loads is designed the same way. . . . You simultaneously say there are some realistic expectations we have about you, like taking a full load unless you have a good reason not to. So that’s the thing I feel the most pride in.

I feel we made some savvy choices on everything from improving the Medical School to the design initiative and digital technology. We sort of focused where we though the future jobs were, where the science and engineering were going, and what resonated with Minnesota’s people and economy, hence agriculture was on the list. So I’m very proud of that.

Another big area is research and technology transfer. Research grants are way up. [Business] agreements are way up. Patents are up. The income and licensing of patents is up. The relationship with the business community, I think, is much improved. I addressed a group of businesspeople who help us vet our patents, and they were very positive about the University. That bridge will always need to be carefully tended to, but I think it’s been strengthened over the last few years.

I saw an opinion poll recently that 74 percent of the people are persuaded that Minnesota has to retain the quality of its great research university. That’s an amazing statistic. It’s higher than the percentage who want to keep tuition low. It’s higher than the number who want to reorganize athletics. It’s even higher than the number who want to improve the graduation rate. So a lot of the message has gotten out, and maybe that’s one of the things you can be proud of.

Q: What do you wish you had stayed to see through?

A: I certainly wish the governor hadn’t vetoed the elements of our bonding package. The Translational Research Facility [a proposed medical research building] is as good a project as this University has ever proposed. Jones Hall [a proposed renovation project] would have been the linchpin of our humanities district. We need to plan for an Institute of Technology classroom building because all our plans to expand computer science and do some other things come to naught if we can’t house the professors and don’t have room for student labs and classrooms and all the rest. I think it will all get done, but I don’t know if it will get done in 2003 or 2004.

There’s still some unfinished work in athletics, but I really feel confident that we did the right things. We had a changing of the guard and we’ll have a structure that will allow the department to succeed. . . . There were systemic things that had to be done. My prediction is for very good things there, whether in the football program, or the Sears Cup [a national ranking that combines finishes in all sports], or the revenue streams or philanthropy or marketing. I think we’re finally positioned [to do these things] after a long, long struggle in athletics. In a way it would have been nice to be here three years from now and see that come to fruition. It will come to fruition, but I won’t be the person here.

Q: The Twin Cities campus has undergone remarkable physical changes, but you also wanted to make a "cultural transformation." Did that go as you had hoped?

A: I think we’ve made progress, but I’m not sure we’re where we need to be. There are many cultural elements. One is a service mentality. I think it is very important that [when] students interact with admissions, or financial aid, Boynton [health service], advisers, professors, whomever, that it be a friendly type of interaction and a service-oriented one where you try to help the students solve their problems. You can’t always solve their problems, but how you handle it is very important. I think we’ve made strides there but there’s still a long way to go.

Another [cultural element] I think has gone better, and that is trying to align the budgets with the priorities and the capital budgets with the operating budgets. You never want to just have a laundry list of needs. You want to show that if you rebuild Walter Library it is not only good for the campus infrastructure and the library, but it also houses the Digital Technology Center.

I think there are still mountains to climb in terms of bringing a sufficiently cooperative attitude among all of our colleges and campuses. We’ve made some progress, but there’s a lot more that needs to be done so that we view ourselves as University citizens first and professors or students in [individual colleges] second.

Q: What University asset is most underappreciated by the general public?

A: I would say that what is underappreciated is the breadth of knowledge at the University. A few stories tend to make the newspapers, but there are 12 sports reporters for every education reporter. There’s [also] a tendency to trivialize education and think it’s only worthwhile if you have some course of study with a direct application to a specific type of job. You learn a lot about the world, you learn a lot about democracy, you learn how to think, you learn how to write, you learn how to synthesize information, you learn about research, you learn how to learn. I think a classical type of education, mediated somewhat by knowing something about the information age and knowing something about science and so forth, is perhaps a much better ticket in life than some people think.

Another thing I think is a tad underappreciated is that the University of Minnesota is not a local resource. People tend to think that, but it’s not; it’s a statewide resource, national and international too. When we do pharmacological research, to think of that as a Hennepin County or Ramsey County enterprise is just wrong. It’s something that will contribute to everyone’s health. . . . In the modern world if you see education as one more hungry mouth to feed and you view it as a local enterprise with a payroll, it does a grave injustice to the impact of higher education on this state.

Q: How have the years here changed you?

A: I think in a number of ways. They’ve made me more consultative. . . . We had a lot of consultation [with faculty] but ultimately we got a lot of things done and at a higher level of quality. Intellectual property polices, grievance policies, health insurance policies—it worked just the way it was supposed to in shared governance.

I learned that I’m not a spin doctor. What Minnesotans seem to like are people who are authentic, sort of true to themselves. While I was here I decided I wasn’t going to try to spin things, I was just going to be authentic. Some may have thought it was spinning because I am irretrievably biased in favor of this institution, I admit that. People appreciate that. Even if they don’t agree with you they can say, "This guy was square with us. He told us the truth. He told us why he did something."

I learned a lot about loyalty. You go to alumni association board meeting and [foundation] board meetings and see [volunteers] who are with you through thick and through thin. They are not an uncritical audience, and nor should they be, but you can always count on them.

Q: Do you have any final words for University alumni and the people of Minnesota?

A: There’s always a temptation to look at the glass as half empty. This glass is way more than halfway filled. As I’ve said many times, there is not any meaningful indicator of anything at this University that is not on the way up. We’re graduating more often, there are more research grants, the physical campus is better, there are more start-ups. Whatever your measure is, it’s better. They need to remember what Governor [Elmer L.] Andersen said: You want efficiency, you want to get the biggest bang for the buck, but ultimately the great universities are not managed, they are nurtured.

Finally, the thing that has given me the most joy at this institution is the students. We have great students. They’re a national asset. They’re a tremendous human resource and I think Minnesotans can be very proud of the students at this university. They’re hardworking, they’re honest, they’ll have brilliant careers, they’re charitable; they volunteer, more than any other students in virtually the entire country, to do charitable works and educational works and philanthropic works. They’re not "bowling alone," as the book goes [Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam, 2000]. If you just come to campus and meet our students you can’t help but be impressed.

So, I say take pride in the institution that can always be improved, but never, ever give up on the place. It’s heading in the right direction.

Chris Coughlan-Smith is senior editor of Minnesota.