Lessons learned : reflections of a university president

176 Pages·2011·0.985 MB·English

by  Bowen, William G

LESSONS LEARNED
William G. Bowen
LESSONS LEARNED
Refl ections of a University President
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2011 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bowen, William G.
Lessons learned : refl ections of a university president / William G. Bowen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-14962-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Universities and colleges—
Administration. 2. Educational leadership—United States. 3. Education, Higher.
I. Title.
LB2336.B68 2011
378.1'11—dc22
[B]
2010033781
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
Th is book has been composed in Minion Pro with ITC Kabel
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To four lifelong friends
who taught me so many of the lessons
recounted in this book:
Paul Benacerraf,
Mary Ellen Bowen,
Stanley Kelley Jr.,
Neil L. Rudenstine

CONTENTS
ONE Preamble and Context 1
TWO Governing 7
The Trustees and the Resident Campus Community 8
Consultation and Decision-making on Campus 16
The ROTC Debate as an Illustrative Case of Shared Governance 21
THREE Administering 24
Building an Effective Administrative Team 24
Structuring Interactions 30
Compensation—for Administrators and for the President 32
FOUR The University in Society: “At a Slight Angle to the Universe” 35
Basic Principles 35
The Proposed Boycott of J. P. Stevens 42
Divestment and South Africa 44
Freedom to Speak—and to Hear 46
Handling Dissent and Invoking Discipline 53
FIVE Setting Academic Priorities: Annual Budgeting 59
Process 59
Principles 61
viii CONTENTS
SIX Setting Academic Priorities: Strategic Decisions 66
Coeducation 67
Investing in the Life Sciences 73
Graduate Education and Professional Schools 76
Strategic Decision-making in General 81
SEVEN Building the Faculty 84
Recruiting and Retaining Faculty 84
Reviewing Tenure Recommendations and Salary Proposals 91
Faculty Diversity 95
EIGHT Undergraduates: Admissions, Financial Aid, and Inclusiveness 98
Diversity and Financial Aid 99
Affi rmative Action and Race 101
Socioeconomic Status 106
Athletic Recruitment 109
Religious Divides: Jewish Students 112
Residential Life 115
NINE Fund-Raising and Alumni Relations 119
Knowing Your Needs—and Your Donors 120
The Robertson Foundation Saga 124
Alumni Relations in General 127
Contending with Hostile Groups 129
TEN Life in a President’s Offi ce—and When to Leave 133
Partners, Colleagues, and Friends 133
Deciding What Not to Do as Well as What to Do 136
On Leaving 140
ELEVEN Epilogue: Why Colleges and Universities Matter So Much 144
Acknowledgments 149
References 155
Index 161
ONE
Preamble and Context
Hard as it is even for me to believe, I have lived in and around presidents’
offi ces for more than forty years. Much of that time (1967–1988) was spent
as provost and then as president of Princeton University. Th ose years
in Nassau Hall, the last sixteen in the president’s offi ce, were oft en tu-
multuous, almost always instructive, and rich in associations as well as ex-
periences. Th e Vietnam War provoked a sweeping and highly productive
reexamination of principles of governance that remain highly relevant;
the war also raised probing questions about the role of the university in
society. Th e civil rights movement added to the sense of urgency so many
of us felt as we tried to alter the university’s persona in fundamental ways
while retaining those elements of its character that remain basic to the in-
tellectual power of the place. Th en, there were more locally driven debates
over issues such as coeducation and how to build faculty strength (espe-
cially in the life sciences) in the face of high infl ation, high unemployment,
escalating energy costs, and depressed stock prices. It was a stimulating
setting for someone learning, as I was, about life in a president’s offi ce.
During those same years, I served as a trustee of Denison University in
Ohio, where I had been an undergraduate, and thus had the opportunity
to see the somewhat diff erent pressures that beat upon the president of a
small liberal arts college. Aft er leaving Princeton, I went to the Andrew W.
1
2 CHAPTER ONE
Mellon Foundation, which placed heavy emphasis on working with the
presidents and provosts of leading colleges and universities. Th ese new as-
sociations provided opportunities of yet another kind to see how diff erent
presidents led their institutions as they addressed myriad problems that
were frequently generic.
I have oft en been asked what (if anything!) I learned from these ex-
periences. Th is book attempts to answer that question. It is not a memoir
and not a history. Rather, it is a series of refl ections on lessons learned
through confronting challenges that present themselves to almost every
president—including structuring relations with trustees, recruiting able
colleagues (and also securing resignations when necessary), managing an
eff ective tenure process, setting academic priorities and then raising the
money needed to give life to the most important ones, budgeting wisely in
order to ensure the institution’s long-term fi nancial viability, reconciling
the need to be orderly and even somewhat bureaucratic (“business-like”)
with the need to respect the special character and climate of the academy,
creating an open and inclusive learning environment for students from
diverse backgrounds, handling dissent and maintaining the openness of
the campus to all points of view, protecting institutional integrity, bal-
ancing internal and external pressures on an unforgiving schedule, and,
fi nally, deciding when—and how—to leave.
Nice as it is to get things right, some of the most compelling lessons
I learned grew out of mistakes that I made. One characteristic of “lessons
learned the hard way” is that a number of them involved a failure on my
part to look closely enough at real evidence (pertaining to admissions, for
example). I sometimes relied too much on what I simply assumed to be
reality and succumbed to the temptation to believe what I wanted to believe.
I want next to acknowledge that, as Hanna Gray, a former president of
both Yale and University of Chicago, wisely observed in commenting on a
draft of the manuscript, what I refer to as “lessons learned” are sometimes more
like “truths confi rmed.” Moreover, some of these “truths” seem obvious—are
obvious—when stated abstractly and removed from the oft en-wrenching
contexts in which they manifested themselves. My tendency to look back
on situations with the wonderful clarity that hindsight gives all of us may
make judgments sound easier and less tangled than they oft en were, given