Maier: New president should be able to inspire

by Allison Maier | March 16, 2010 | Montana Kaimin

Even when you’re talking about a faculty and student talent show, there’s something endlessly amusing about the phrase “University of Montana President George M. Dennison will headline the event.”

But any skepticism about Dennison’s upcoming Thursday guitar performance probably has less to do with his history of not-terribly-rousing State of the University addresses and more to do with the fact that it’s difficult to envision a time when the UM president was willing to hop on stage for any event that didn’t involve a podium. In short: It’s hard to picture Dennison rocking out.

That is the general problem with university presidents everywhere.

Becoming the head of an institute of higher learning is much like becoming the head of a country. It’s a job that takes an entire career to achieve.

Before people become university presidents, they usually work their way through various other jobs in academia, holding titles as professors, deans and provosts before finally taking the executive role. It’s not unlike the political world, in which people often work their way up from local and state positions to Congress and sometimes even beyond that.

In both hierarchies — and in much of the working world — the emphasis is on experience. People can’t get to the top job unless they have a resume that proves they’ve climbed every step of the staircase leading up to it.

The problem is that the more time a person spends inside the world of academia or politics, the less connected they become to the world outside, whether they realize it or not. So by the time they reach the level at which they have the power to truly impact people’s lives, their point of reference is no longer relevant; they don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye with the people they’re serving.

For that reason, it’s difficult to find a university president who is personable on a variety of levels — someone who can relate to students and community members as well as administrators and politicians. It’s rare to find a president who can articulate a clear vision for the university without burying it under jargon few people understand.

Because of this, it’s hard to find a president who can get people to care about a university as much as the administration itself is expected to care. And it’s unfair to expect a president and administrators to navigate through the changes facing college campuses without help from the surrounding community.

This is something the recently-formed Presidential Search Advisory Committee must keep in mind as it embarks on the unenviable task of sifting through applications and deciding who is worthy of taking over Dennison’s office, moving into a space that’s been occupied for 20 years.

Sometimes the right person for the job is not the person with the most impressive list of credentials or the largest number of years in the field. In fact, that’s often not the case.

The University needs someone with a grasp on what is going on in the world of academia as well as the world outside; an individual who respects Dennison’s legacy, but who is ready to take UM down a new path; someone who has a plan and can explain it, candidly and directly, to others.

Someone, quite simply, who is ready to rock.

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