You were asking me what my day is like. It's very varied and seasonal.For example, we're just about starting budget season. We started about a week ago planning the budgets for next year. A lot of days of the week I'll have a couple of meetings on budget. Prior to November, I won't be having meetings on budget. When we start doing Program Review, which we do for all the academic and functional departments at the university on a cycle basis, I'll have lots of meetings on it. Those types of things are seasonal.
When I'm traveling obviously I'm out of town and when I get back, I spend a lot of time simply doing catch-up with my mail and email. I would say I spend an hour and a half to two hours a day on mail and email, just going through and answering what needs to be answered. I probably get a hundred emails a day, maybe half of them need to be answered. The rest of them are either informational or junk stuff. So I don't pretend to answer every single one.
There are lots of ad-hoc meetings with senior staff. We're doing searches now for a dean of the music school and a new vice-president for development. I've got to interview the candidates; I've got to meet with those who have met the candidates. So that can be again a time consuming process when we're in the middle of it. We're not always in the middle of it. So you really have to distinguish between things that have their regular cycles and things which come up.
This semester, for some reason, I've been doing lots of lecturing around campus. I'm lecturing tonight to an undergraduate leadership class, yesterday I lectured to a Kellogg conference on globalization. I'll be lecturing next week to a club down in Indiana. I do a reasonable amount of speaking on international affairs as well as what the university is all about to alumni groups and to Chicago groups.
I'm on a number of boards. I'm on the board of Shedd Aquarium; I'm on the board of the New York Council on Foreign Relations and the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. I'm on the board of Steppenwolf [Theater]. Each one of those groups will have probably four meetings a year. So that means that I'll be at those meetings. Some of them are in town, one is in New York. I'm also on the selection committee for new presidents of the New York Council on Foreign Relations, I have meetings on that.
I probably spend a certain amount of time during the campaign either calling donors or meeting with donors when I'm out of town. The campaign will be over at the end of August, but I'm not sure it will make the slightest bit of difference. There will be fewer big events, but I'm still busy trying to get new resources for the University.
I spend lots of my time simply meeting with senior staff--the provost, the vice presidents for student affairs, for university relations, for government affairs, for business and finance--trying to figure out what's to be done in governing affairs, hiring. Yesterday I met for two hours with the deans on the Deans Council.
I started off the day yesterday with a meeting at 7:30, downtown, with the executive committee of the board of trustees. That means getting up fairly early - a quarter of six - to get downtown by 7:30. That's a meeting you have to also prepare for. That meeting goes on from 7:30 to nine. I then came back up here and talked to Kellogg at this globalization conference from 10:30 ‘till 11:30. I worked on mail and email from 11:30 to one and skipped lunch. I met with a job candidate from one to two, met with the council of deans from two to four. I think I worked on email from four to a quarter of five. Then I went back downtown for the second time. My wife was on a panel at the Chicago Humanities Festival. I went to that from 5:30 to six.
I then walked over from the law school where the panel was to the Tarry building with the medical school for a reception for Mrs. Ryan's course. Mrs. Ryan gives a course for continuing learning downtown. She's the wife of the chairman of the board of trustees. I then went to the lecture for that course and then had dinner with the mayor of Chicago and the Ryans. That all got done at 10:20. I was home at 11 o'clock, I read the newspapers and got to bed about 12.
I was born in 1939, so I will be 64 in May. I'm from New York. I went to graduate school at the University of Chicago. I'm not a Chicagoan, but I also taught at the University of Chicago for one year when I came back from Africa.
I moved to Princeton in 1966 and I was in Princeton for 28 years before I came to Northwestern. I lived abroad for many of those years. I've done research projects in Japan, Nepal, Egypt, Mexico, Turkey, as well as Africa.
I usually try to teach one quarter so I'll teach spring quarter. In fact I just got a dunning letter from the political science department reminding me I haven't got my stuff in. I usually teach an undergraduate senior seminar. I change the topic. So I've done it on the IMF, U.S-Russian relations and the intelligence community. This year I think I'll do it on political leadership.
Once I taught an evening course at Kellogg, but all the other teaching has been senior seminars. I will do lots of ad hoc talks and lectures like the one at Kellogg yesterday. I see students fairly regularly I have either breakfast or luncheon meetings with them. I meet with the ASG folks. I meet with the Daily on a regular basis. When organized groups have something pressing to say to me, we'll consider whether I have time to do it. I meet with students on a pretty regular basis, one way or the next. I get a lot of emails from students. I try to respond to them pretty quickly. I'll do my emails and talk on the phone at the same time. I'll stay late or get in early to clear up emails. All day long, if I get ten minutes, I'll look at my email. I don't know if it's an efficient way of doing it.
I try to read the newspapers at breakfast, or late at night. I'll read three or four newspapers on a daily basis. I read the Trib, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times. Sometimes I'll read the Washington Post. I'll catch breaking news online. I also get the Chronicle of Higher Education which comes out on a weekly basis.
I try to go to a significant number of athletic events, that's also time consuming. Today I have the Catbackers' lunch - these are women who support the football team. I'll go to that. Normally I go to all the away football games, which can be time consuming. I try to go to all the home basketball games. I try to go to a women's volleyball game, or a swim meet. I can't go to every sporting event on a regular basis.
When I first came here, I was playing squash about three times a week. Now I'm down to once a week. Once a week for squash and once a week for tennis. I just can't seem to make the time. I used to be a pretty good player. It's fun and I enjoy playing it.
I try to improve everything at NU. I try to make it a stronger place which means hiring the best faculty, attracting the best students, hiring the best staff and creating the best facilities. That's what my job is all about.
I think we hear from students a lot. I think students sometimes confuse hearing from them and agreeing with them. I can hear from people as to their views, but my job is to take a long-run view about what's best for the university. That's what I try to do. This is a place with many different constituencies--students, faculty, staff, alumni, people outside the university, politicians, the citizens of Evanston. They all may have very different views. And within those groups they may have very different views.
Take food service for example. Students have been complaining about meal plans. But the meal plans that we have are an outcome of student committees--students working with the Vice President for Student Affairs office. They weren't just plopped down on students, they were negotiated and discussed with student groups. What students are complaining about is what they themselves did in the case with the meal plans.
My point is you can't satisfy everybody. You can only satisfy everybody if you have a very expensive system--expensive to run, expensive to administer. That's not just true of food plans, that's true of most things. The issue for a lot of these things is not that we have not heard students, but they're speaking with a lot of different voices--they're not always consistent voices. It's a little bit unfair to say their voices haven't been heard. It's my responsibility to run the university. That responsibility is delegated to me by the board of trustees. I do my best to try to understand what it is people think is a good idea, but I come to my own conclusions.
