 "Photo: UC Berkeley")
Robert Holub applied to be chancellor of the University of Massachusetts because he saw it as "a campus that wants to move forward." It was the advertisement for the position, he said, that attracted him to the job.
"In the first paragraph, it said that the University of Massachusetts Amherst wants to be one of the premier universities in the country," he told students at a meeting yesterday morning. "I want to be at a campus that wants to improve and wants to gain more prominence nationally as a public university."
Since 2006, Holub has been the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Prior to his position in Knoxville, he was the dean of the undergraduate division of the college of letters and sciences at the University of California-Berkeley. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in German Literature.
Yesterday, Holub spent the day meeting with various stakeholders on campus, including students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni and community leaders.
At an open meeting in the afternoon, he stressed his faith in and commitment to public higher education, highlighting his time in Berkeley and Madison at two of the nation's top public universities.
"We have to get out the message that an investment in public education is an investment in the state," he said. Development would be an important part of his role on campus, he said, occupying "somewhere north of 30 percent" of his time. "We have to be more effective in contacting the alumni for the help that is needed. We don't perform as well as other universities that are flagship universities in their state," Holub said.
He also emphasized his faith in using "best practices" to raise the caliber of the University, examining what works at other institutions. "One of the challenges I've had in Tennessee is an entrenched way of doing things that doesn't look at national standards and best practices," he said. Holub said he doesn't believe in top-down initiatives when it comes to distributing resources. "I don't come in and say, 'I think we need more nanotechnology,'" he said. "Very seldom does a campus work well if the central leadership dictates what is going to happen." Instead, he would rely on faculty initiative, creativity and enthusiasm. "I think my job, quite frankly, is to enable faculty," he said. To raise the profile of the university, Holub also said it is important for UMass to attract top-notch students, and to ensure high retention rates through support programs. "We want students that are going to be high-achieving, ambitious students," he said, adding that outstanding students come from "all segments of the population."
"I don't see overall excellence as being in conflict with issues of diversity and issues of access. There are too many examples I know of where the two go hand-in-hand," he said. To attract the best students, UMass needs active recruiting programs, especially targeting rural and inner-city areas, he said. "Campuses have to make themselves attractive to a diverse population, and sometimes that isn't easy," he said. "You can't just hang out your shingle and say, 'Come on in.' You have to go where you're going to find that diverse population."
Holub also responded to student concerns about affordability. He is not against raising fees, he said, but believes it's important to make sure money gets back to students in the form of financial aid.
"You have to look at what your financial aid structure is, because you don't want to exclude students who have promise, and certainly you don't want to exclude students who have been disadvantaged and can't perform," he said.
Holub said that he would need to learn more about UMass's situation before presuming to know the answers to several questions posed. "I want to try to meet a lot of the faculty and the staff and the students, because I don't know this campus," he said. In Tennessee, he invites every new faculty member to a small group luncheon, holds regular meetings with the student government, and eats into the dining halls once a month to hear about student experiences and feelings.
Shaun Jamieson, the associate director of the Center for Student Development, said he liked Holub, but he would have liked to hear more specific responses.
"I felt like he was very down-to-earth, very natural," he said. "I wish he had either been more able or willing to directly answer some of the questions … His talk of consensus building and bottom-up approaches is hopeful."
Malcolm Chu, next year's Student Government Association president, said Holub's long background in public higher education was attractive.
"He has a lot of experience in public education, and I liked what he said about encouraging the state to invest in public higher education," Chu said. "I think overall, it sounds like there's a wealth of information and a wealth of resources that would benefit campus."
However, Chu was unsure of how Holub's philosophies would play out in the campus context.
"There was a lot of 'I would have to evaluate this, I would have to evaluate that when I get here,'" he said. "I was slightly unclear on campus what direction he would be interested in taking the campus." Holub is the last of four candidates to visit the UMass Amherst campus. The others are Martin Hall, deputy vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town in South Africa; Harris Pastides, vice president for research and health sciences at the University of South Carolina and executive director of the University of South Carolina Research Foundation; and Satish K. Tripathi, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Following the finalist visits, UMass President Jack Wilson will make his recommendation to the Board of Trustees, which will make the final decision.
Campus and community members may submit feedback on the chancellor candidates to skelly@umassp.edu until Friday, April 25.
Katie Huston can be reached at managingeditor@dailycollegian.com.
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